Spelling is being changed to make it more casual – Kommersant FM

Literacy is alienating to young people. As the New York Post notes, Zoomers in their 20s and 30s, as well as the next generation of alphas, typically don’t use punctuation in their texting. Many people simplify sentences, for example, preferring small letters to capital letters. Thus, young people do not associate themselves with an older audience. Therefore, businesses are increasingly choosing such informal communication to attract new customers. Are Russian entrepreneurs ready for these risks? And in what ways do they attract young people? Grigory Kolganov will tell you.

Young messenger users seem to be the busiest people on the planet. Every minute counts – what are the rules of spelling and punctuation? The trend noticed by American journalists is also typical for Russia, judging by school chats and social networks.

But it turns out that young people write with errors not because of illiteracy, but because this makes communication more relaxed and less aggressive. Anyone who writes following the rules is immediately identified by the alpha and zoomer generations as an outsider, at least in terms of age. Should businesses adapt to new trends when talking to a young audience? Most likely, yes, answers the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alfa Bank Oleg Sysuev:

“I have a feeling that the modern language, which burst into our lives 15 years ago, used a lot of foreign borrowings and terms. I got tired of it, and bankers and entrepreneurs began to look for something new and fresh. This, oddly enough, turned out to be a simple human informal language. It inspires more confidence.”

To earn the trust of a young and young audience, you should abandon the use of capital letters in favor of small ones, that is, lowercase ones. It’s better to say goodbye to punctuation marks too: a monosyllabic “thank you” or “no” with a period at the end can be regarded at a minimum as unfriendly, and at most as an unwillingness to continue the dialogue.

And for the sake of brevity, it is more correct for business to move from words to symbols, adds Alexey Lokontsev, founder of the TopGun barbershop chain and the Colizeum e-sports arena chain:

“We use emoji often. Both young people and even serious businesses like TopGun love signs more. I myself already communicate more with emojis than words. Even when I sent congratulations, I replaced the words “Happy New Year” with “Christmas tree”, it’s more convenient.”

There seems to be a linguistic gap between young and older audiences: according to a Rambler study, two-thirds of adult Russians do not like to communicate via messengers with illiterate interlocutors.

But for business, the main thing is that the client understands the essence, however, this can hardly be achieved by ignoring spelling, punctuation and other limits of linguistic decency, agrees the owner of the Timur Begichev Beauty Studio, Timur Begichev:

“No communication on a first-name basis, even with young people, with young people – this is respect. Of course, we don’t use the words “crash” and “zashkvar”. It will look stupid, because we ourselves are no longer young, and specialists must correspond to their inner world. Communication in messengers should be very clear, structured, without ambiguous readings.”

Linguistic balancing act in advertising has more than once put Russian business in an awkward position. Just remember vacuum cleaners that cost pennies, and burgers with the warning “Be careful not to escalate”! There are only a few brands that have found the golden mean and communicate correctly with the audience, admits the founder of the PurpleDoor agency, Alexey Pak:

“This is a very delicate game. There are few brands that know how to speak the same language with their audience. It is very difficult to find the line, and it is easy to offend the audience, even when speaking the same language. And here, instead of gaining loyalty, you can lose it altogether, and then also get some kind of conflict in terms of media coverage. There is a high risk of very large reputational costs.”

In the 2000s, the movement of “bastards” actively developed in the RuNet, but their famous “preved”, “peshi ischo” and other deliberate distortions of the language never became a trend in marketing. Perhaps the alpha and zoomer generations will be more persistent?

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Elena Tyuleneva