Text Messaging Harms Written Language

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A recent study of Irish schoolchildren says that text messaging is having a negative impact on spelling and grammar. The State Examination Commission stated that the frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.

"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to Wednesday's Irish Times. "Text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional conventions in writing."
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I had to read a paper whose title replaced the "you" with "u." At that point, I knew that this girl was going to fail.
 
R U Srious? No wai. Our typin is 1337!
 
clockworks said:
I had to read a paper whose title replaced the "you" with "u." At that point, I knew that this girl was going to fail.
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Hahaha.

I noticed myself doing that when writing documents, almost becomes a habit. I personally don't think it's that bad, as you still project the same message.
 
same here, the worst part is of the my multi major degree....one of them was english. It's humbling to realize two years out of said degree and my grammar blows. however an interesting little tidbit to go along with this, some misspellings are actually going to become the correct spelling as english becomes a more phonetic language. A lot of the silent letters will slowly fade from the language as it evolves.

though admittedly i hope some of the net speak stays away, the "ai' stuff drives me nuts.
 
Of course you wouldnt. Good luck graduating high school...

Now I don't feel bad when I'm accused of being a grammar natzi on misc forums. It seems we need more of them to try to counter-act this potential danger to our kids education. Kids and teenagers spend more and more time on the internet where communcation is much more forgiving when it comes to grammar/spelling.

Personally I think accusing people of being a "grammar natzi" is a poor excuse to write and sound like an idiot 8 year old. The only thing that can be forgiven is typing mistakes, and there is a big difference between typing mistakes and spelling mistakes.
 
I spend a lot of my time daily on IRC in various rooms, and for the most part, usage of AOL speak is derided, laughed at and generally frowned upon which is awesome.

I take great pride in being able to pound out words uber-rapidly on my keyboard (granted, I'll typo and I generally don't capitalize properly), and the only "real" acronyms I'll use are probably "lol", (though since I'm a 4chan-tard, its more LAWLs than anything.), and perhaps a few others.

I can understand the acronyms when you're messagine on a phone or something without a decent kb, but letting that carry over to other aspects of your life and thinking its ok? Your damn fault, and you'd better be penalized *severely* for it.

Reminds me of that currently running Cingular ad where the mom completely pwns her daugther's text messaging. Good stuff. :D
 
XamediX said:
Of course you wouldnt. Good luck graduating high school...

Now I don't feel bad when I'm accused of being a grammar natzi on misc forums. It seems we need more of them to try to counter-act this potential danger to our kids education. Kids and teenagers spend more and more time on the internet where communcation is much more forgiving when it comes to grammar/spelling.

Personally I think accusing people of being a "grammar natzi" is a poor excuse to write and sound like an idiot 8 year old. The only thing that can be forgiven is typing mistakes, and there is a big difference between typing mistakes and spelling mistakes.
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Who are you projecting your response to?
 
XamediX said:
Of course you wouldnt. Good luck graduating high school...

Now I don't feel bad when I'm accused of being a grammar natzi on misc forums. It seems we need more of them to try to counter-act this potential danger to our kids education. Kids and teenagers spend more and more time on the internet where communcation is much more forgiving when it comes to grammar/spelling.

Personally I think accusing people of being a "grammar natzi" is a poor excuse to write and sound like an idiot 8 year old. The only thing that can be forgiven is typing mistakes, and there is a big difference between typing mistakes and spelling mistakes.
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Well said.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I believe that he was responding to you.
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That's what I thought.


Well then :)


I would disagree completely with his statement as I am not in high school, I graduated that a long time ago with Honors, I also have two degrees.

The thing is, I view the internet as a relaxation destination, I feel that working everyday, typing up legal binding documents and doing a bunch of crap, that I need to unwind. I do not feel like being haunted online due to my typing/spelling... sometimes I really just punch away without bothering to spell check... because in the end, it's the internet.

I found that many people shares the same views as I do and simply do not care to be corrected by folks who probably lives on the other side of the world. If a hobby starts becoming like work and constantly being performance monitored, it wouldn't be a hobby anymore.

Kinda like how I view a vacation, at home I keep everything tidy, I don't lay my socks around or anything... but when I'm away on vacation, the essentials becomes optional :cool:
 
LOLZ!!1! 3levnety I'm n ur diktionary, humpin ur w0rdz!

OK Seriously. Who cares? My 13 year old daughter can TXT with "net speak" and still turn in a A+ English paper. It's kids being lazy who are screwing this up. If their laziness is seeping in to their homework, then I say its poor parenting.

Sorry but I'm just sick of parents looking for scapegoats for their kids failings.

In fact my kids respect the hell out of the fact that I don't berate them with the usual kid rules and all I ask in return is that they keep the school grades up. You would be very suprised how well the "two way street" angle works with kids.

Don't get me wrong. My kids act up sometimes, but handling the situation with respect to their feelings instead of yelling goes a long way.
 
XamediX said:
Personally I think accusing people of being a "grammar natzi" is a poor excuse to write and sound like an idiot 8 year old.

There is a big difference between typing mistakes and spelling mistakes.
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You can probably "Spelling Natzi's" comments with a grain of salt.
 
Axiomatic said:
Sorry but I'm just sick of parents looking for scapegoats for their kids failings.
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I agree. It is a parent's responsibility (not just a school teacher's) to educate their children.

But the interesting part is how languages evolve over time. This will probably be part of how "Modern English" evolves.
 
chew63 said:
I agree. It is a parent's responsibility (not just a school teacher's) to educate their children.

But the interesting part is how languages evolve over time. This will probably be part of how "Modern English" evolves.
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I agree with you completely, the etymology of net speak is fascinating. If you read enough internet forums you can eventually start to tell little things about the people typing. Their age, their nationality (sometimes), gender is pretty easy to pick out, and every now and then I can sometimes tell if they are East or Wast coast Americans by the jargon they use. It's kind of like detective work. :D

Oh, and you Canadians are easy. Most of the time you dutifully add the Canadian "eh?" to your typed sentences for us readers to pick up on.
 
I use proper spelling, capitalization and punctuation when texting...but it takes so long to write one message that way that I only end five messages per month.
 
Simple solution.

Don't tolerate it as an educator.
Fail the student, and when the parent's complain explain to them it's because their child is an imbecile and the apparently it's genetic.
 
KaosDG said:
Don't tolerate it as an educator.
Fail the student, and when the parent's complain explain to them it's because their child is an imbecile and the apparently it's genetic.
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GASP! That's discrimination against people who don't take responsibility for their own lives!!!
 
This is why the NCAA will do away with coaches texting recruits. They're all about the academics.... right?

Right?

Bueller?
 
chew63 said:
I agree. It is a parent's responsibility (not just a school teacher's) to educate their children.

But the interesting part is how languages evolve over time. This will probably be part of how "Modern English" evolves.
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I have a problem with that...

Irregardless of how much a word is used incorrectly, this all could of been avoided without affecting the language, with a bit of education and insure the success of our children.
 
Ockie said:
I would argue the opposite. With religion you have to have responsibility if you want to live an eternal life.
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Agreed. You must face up to what you've done and what you can't do.

Mods: sorry for the off-topic discussion.
 
KaosDG said:
I have a problem with that...

Irregardless of how much a word is used incorrectly, this all could of been avoided without affecting the language, with a bit of education and insure the success of our children.
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hahahaha
 
Ockie said:
This comment wasn't needed :(
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Yet you acknowledged and refuted it.

Ockie said:
With religion you have to have responsibility if you want to live an eternal life.
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:confused: Yes, if and only if you believe in eternal life in the first place. Quite a strange thing to say.



As long as no one uses TXT with me and knows when to type/write properly when needed, I've no problem with it. If children grow up to be complete idiots because of TXT, it'll make others look better. The trouble would be if these kids grow up to be the ones teaching the new style. :eek:
 
Yea... I definitely misspelled "Nazi". And yes the comment was directed at Ockie, and assuming that he was being truthful in his "credentials" the comment was misplaced. But the way Ockie worded his initial statement, no one would've known that. But as far as the article goes, it does seem that they are trying to blame everyone for what the lazy are doing. I've noticed personally on forums that grammar/spelling is declining. on IRC, no one really cares as as someone else already mentioned, most people get ridiculed for using "leet speak".

Looks like its time for parents to sit down with their kids and explain the difference between text messaging and txt msg'ing.
 
GJSNeptune said:
That's called religion. ;)
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Something needs to keep the sheep in line.

On one side, I believe text messaging spilling over into other written language looks crude and ignorant on the part of the writer. On the other hand, I believe Darwin is right and things (even language) evolves. Of course, if we stop fucking stupid people that write poorly, our children will enjoy even better messages on [H].
 
Just to add, these forums don't have an edit function that I ever found. An easy to use edit function can cut down on a lot of grammar/spelling errors on forums.
 
XamediX said:
Just to add, these forums don't have an edit function that I ever found. An easy to use edit function can cut down on a lot of grammar/spelling errors on forums.
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The Forum has an edit feature. This subforum does not.
 
Manaknight said:
same here, the worst part is of the my multi major degree....one of them was english. It's humbling to realize two years out of said degree and my grammar blows. however an interesting little tidbit to go along with this, some misspellings are actually going to become the correct spelling as english becomes a more phonetic language. A lot of the silent letters will slowly fade from the language as it evolves.

though admittedly i hope some of the net speak stays away, the "ai' stuff drives me nuts.
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its about time it became more phonetic. and we an just get rid of q and k, along with a couple other useless letters.
 
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