(I think I'm going to put this explanation in a text file for future use - I seem to be typing it so often!)

This is not pedantism - because we have so many members of the board for whom English is not their first language (or even second etc.) we want to maintain a reasonable standard of English for their benefit - this is why we do not want l33t-speak or other internet abbreviations - and phonetic abbreviations can be very confusing.