My problem with unofficial abbreviations

I know many of my social media friends will not want to hear this. But I think it will help someone out there understand me and how I hold conversations online. Apart from helping you get sharper at spelling and grammar, writing words in full can make you feel confident of yourself.

Abbreviated writing, as I will call it, is one of the common ways of writing
these days, if not the commonest. It is common these days, especially with social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+. However, I find that it is not helping me due to several reasons:

• I find it very difficult to read:
  

Since it is difficult for me to read, it is probably difficult for others too. There is no approved abbreviations list to follow. There is no defined order too. Hence, reading it becomes difficult and results in guessing. Guessing is not always good.

• I am not fluent in the English language:
  

I am still a learner. I want to be fluent in this language as much as I can. I believe writing words in full will help my spelling and improve my writing. Not only that, but writing words in full will also be easy for people to read what I write and not misinterpret the message I'm conveying to them.

• My audience is unlimited:
  

I can't specifically tell which people would read what I write. School children who look up to me maybe disappointed that I can't spell certain words and therefore hide behind unapproved forms of abbreviation. I will be utterly embarrassed if I should hear such things being said about me.

• I don't want to appear lazy in my conversations:
  

Some people may think I'm lazy to write or chat with them online because I'm writing things in abbreviated forms that make 'no sense' to them. They may think I'm not worth chatting with.

• I'm not a computer 'illiterate':
  

I know my keyboard well. I know that 's' and 'e' on the keyboard is not far off. I rather find it difficult typing 'c' and 'x'. I will, therefore, find it very difficult to write a 'c' instead of 'see' in a chat. If you are good at typing, you will love to type words in full.

Instead of using unapproved abbreviations that are difficult to understand, I use summary (as taught in secondary school) to summarize long messages. This is me. I don't know about you.

What do you make of using shorthand in conversations? Share your thoughts here.