Talking of the laptops, here's what they get used for: about 1% is legitimate business use by me and the rest is use by the girls for their stuff.

What do they use them for? Well, Karen shops and Quinn chats. Karen spends most of her time on the laptop looking at eBay. Whatever it is she's looking at it almost always involves me spending money. I've stopped asking what she's looking at now.Quinn on the other hand spends all of her time on MSN Messenger.

When we moved in to the house and worked on her room I "future proofed" it by installing a network socket. This, I thought, would come in handy at GCSE age when she has her own PC in there and researches her homework on it. Maybe that day will come, but she's already found a much more interesting use of the internet - chatting with friends.

This worries me, but not for the usual reasons. Yeah, it's worrying that a just-turned-11-year-old has open use of MSN. She's a sensible kid though and we lay off on the warnings there. What worries me is the language and the amount of time she likes to spend on there. If left to her own devices she'd be happy it seems to spend her whole 2ix week summer holiday on the laptop. It got to the point during school term where we had to restrict her use. I even investigated which port the chat protocols worked on so I could block them at the router, based on a schedule.

Then there's the language. The fact that there's a lot of swearing goes on doesn't really bother me. We've all been kids. Swearing is part of our language and a way of communicating. As long as she doesn't start telling us to f-off I'm not worried about that. The thing that worries me is the SMS speak. It's a pet hate of mine - all this "Wot u doin" stuff. Quinn rarely allows me to see the screen when she's chatting on MSN. She threatened to "kill me" when I told her I could read the transcripts without her password or that I could "spy" on them. Neither of which I would do of course. She needn't be worried though. I can barely understand what they're saying anyway. It makes me wonder if they can half the time. I've seen Quinn type some code-like message to a friend, which was followed by a pause and the reply "wot".

Now, I'm open-minded to the idea that language evolves. But surely evolution is for the better? An improvement on what was there. SMS speak is not. Sure, maybe tonight would be better spelt tonite, but not tnt. Grammar and spelling are an important part of communication. I don't need to show you how a missing comma can transform a sentence from one meaning to another do I?

SMS speak should stay on mobile phones. I've been known to use a u in place of you from time to time. SMSing is a pain and this makes it easier. In all other forms of communication there's no excuse for it. Especially not in written form. Karen (a teacher) has marked exam papers littered with SMS speak.

Part of it may be the need to impress. I remember a "conversation" I had with Quinn, where she proudly listed all the abbreviations and acronyms she'd learnt. "Bet you don't know what BRB means". "What about LMAO then?". If it's cool to know this then maybe it's even cooler to invent you own. Whereby you shorten any word you can, for no apparent reason.

My battle with Quinn takes the form of me ignoring her whenever she MSNs me (normally from the next room) and it makes no sense. I just reply "wot" until it makes some sort of sense. The sad part is that I know full well she's good at English at her spelling is great. Such a shame.

Aside: Well, what do you know!? I just did a spell check and was literally just about to publish the above when a window pops up from Quinn asking me "wat u doin". Oh, the irony.

[11:34] Quinn: wat u doin
[11:35] Jake: ignoring you
[11:35] Quinn: dunt u mean ignorin u
[11:36] Quinn: lol

I'll give her credit: a) she's got a good sense of humour and b) knows how to wind me up.