The article discusses the application of the principle of least effort in the generation and perception of text. The initial abbreviation is one of the ways to shorten the word length in modern languages. The tendency to shorten word length is considered from the perspective of linguistic synergetics and information theory. Abbreviations save speech effort, but overuse of them makes them leads to the emasculation of the meaning of messages. The growth of abbreviations in vocabulary leads to an increase in homonymy, desemantization of words and, with the expansion of the flow of “polymodal texts”, – to a decrease in confidence in the verbal component of communication. The trend towards abbreviation is evidence of the dehumanization of the language. Examples of modern initial abbreviations are given.
linguistic synergetics; abbreviation tendency; word length; deseman- tization; decoding; Russian language; quantitative linguistics.