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  3. Texting has long been lamented as the downfall of the written word, "penmanship for illiterates," as one critic called it. To w

Texting has long been lamented as the downfall of the written word, "penmanship for illiterates," as one critic called it. To w

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问题     Texting has long been lamented as the downfall of the written word, "penmanship for illiterates," as one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL. Texting properly isn’t writing at all—it’s actually more similar to spoken language. And it’s a "spoken" language that is getting richer and more complex by the year.
    Historically, talking came first; writing is just an artifice that came along later. While talk is largely subconscious and rapid, writing is deliberate and slow. Over time, writers took advantage of this and started crafting sentences such as this one, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "The whole engagement lasted above 12 hours, till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself."
    No one talks like that casually—or should. But it is natural to desire to do so for special occasions. In the old days, we didn’t much write like talking because there was no mechanism to reproduce the speed of conversation. But texting and instant messaging do—and a revolution has begun. It involves the basic mechanics of writing, but in its economy, spontaneity and even vulgarity, texting is actually a new kind of talking. There is a virtual fashion of concision and little interest in capitalization or punctuation. The argument that texting is "poor writing" is analogous, then, to one that the Rolling Stones is "bad music" because it doesn’t use violas.
    Texting is developing its own kind of grammar. Take LOL. It doesn’t actually mean "laughing out loud" in a literal sense anymore. LOL has evolved into something much subtler and sophisticated and is used even when nothing is remotely amusing. Jocelyn texts "Where have you been?" and Annabelle texts back "LOL at the library studying for two hours." LOL signals basic empathy between texters, easing tension and creating a sense of equality. Instead of having a literal meaning, it does something—conveying an attitude—just like the "-ed" ending conveys past tense rather than "meaning" anything. LOL, of all things, is grammar.
    Civilization is fine—people banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, and there is no evidence that texting is ruining composition skills. Worldwide people speak differently from the way they write, and texting—quick, casual and only intended to be read once—is actually a way of talking with your fingers.
We may learn from the text that texting is ________.
选项 A、more delicate and complicated than writing
B、different from writing in grammatical uses
C、responsible for the degradation of writing skills
D、more of "talking" style than "writing" style
答案D
解析 第一段第三句作者表达了他对texting的看法，认为短信根本不是写作isn’t…at all)，更接近口头语言 (more similar to…)，最后一段作者也把短信息归纳为一种用手指说话的方式，因此D项为正确答案。A项中的delicate and complicated对应原文第四段，该段第四句指出像LOI这样的短信语言已演变为更加微妙而复杂的事物，但没有谈到发短信与写作的对比，A项放大了原意。B项中的grammatical uses可定位到第四段，原文指出短信交流逐渐形成自己的语法，并以LOI为例将其语法与写作的语法形式 “-ed”进行类比，说明了二者语法的相似，而非差异。C项中的degradation“衰落”为ruin的同义替代，可以定位到末段第一句，原文指出没有证据能够证明发短信会毁掉我们的写作技能，C项与原文不符。
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