Thinks happen: Thinking it over: Vandalism vs Art

Poor spelling in graffiti is often the norm. Omitting the G in “ing” verbs and nouns is common. “Tagging” becomes “taggin’” but they seldom add the trailing apostrophe to note there are missing letters. Worse, many examples are seen in message board commentary, where an “ing” word is not only missing a G, but is also misspelled in a sort of phonetic way. “Sucking” becomes “Sucken”, an entirely new word.

The degeneration of spelling through the medium referred to as “texting” is an abomination. In “texting” the new word “sucken” becomes “sukn” or perhaps “sckn”.

A curious thing about this message is that one would expect the word “snitch” to be misspelled “snich” but it is not. If this vandal-with-a-message was educated enough to correctly spell a word containing a camouflaged letter, then why omit the G? Was it because he ran out of room?

According to Wikipedia, “Snitch” may refer to:

A pejorative term for an informant
"Snitch" (song), by Obie Trice
Stop Snitchin', a campaign against people who provide information to law enforcement about criminal activity
Golden Snitch, a ball in the Quidditch game of the Harry Potter series
“Snitch”, aka “Monument Ave.”, a 1998 thriller film

Note that even Wiki contracts “Snitching” to “Snitchin’” but includes an apostrophe.

“Snitch” is a word from a bygone era, the ‘20’s perhaps. What ever happened to “Squealer” or “tattle-tale” or “stool pigeon” or “fink”? Why haven’t vandals invented a new word? “Narc” has even degenerated from a drug culture informant to just a general informant noun and verb.

In an earlier rant, the degeneration of our language was lamented, noting that it began with a series of grunts. It progressed slowly, over generations, into a complex language with thousands of descriptive words. Now, it seems to be rapidly returning to a series of grunts.