The San Matean

Issue date: 5/27/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Pew Internet and American Life Project

Across the country, millions of fingers dash across cell phone number pads each day, pounding out abbreviations and emoticons to communicate via short messages. But is all the "text speech" taking a toll on American writing?

Nearly two-thirds of teens admitted to incorporating "some informal style" from their text-based communications in their school work, according to a recent national survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project released April 24 of this year. Half of the students surveyed in the "Writing, Technology and Teens" study acknowledged that they sometimes neglect proper capitalization and punctuation in school assignments and 38 percent admitted to using text shortcuts, like LOL, in school work. Even emoticons have crept into academic projects - 25 percent of the students surveyed said that they have used the symbols for school assignments.

Though the heavy use of technology-based communication in modern society is easy to see, even the researchers involved in the project were surprised by the volume of text-based communication teens reported - and even more surprised to learn that most teenagers do not consider the text-based communication to be "real" writing.

Of the students surveyed, 85 percent of teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use some form of electronic personal communication. More often than not, that communication is written in an informal style and is marked by abbreviations, emoticons, alternative spellings and incorrect grammar. For many teens who engage in such high-frequency, informal writing, the line between formal writing and socially acceptable communication standards blurs.

"I think the study had a number of important findings," Pew Internet and American Life Study Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart told the San Matean from Pew headquarters in Washington D.C. via phone interview. "They did admit that informal writing often leaked into their school writing. Much of it was accidental. Teens were aware of it and able to correct it when it was pointed out to them… Another surprising finding was the extensive use of technology in communications where they engage in writing, without really thinking it was writing."

But some educators are hesitant to draw a correlation between texting and the deterioration of writing standards.

"I'm skeptical of claims like that," said Daniel Keller, associate professor of Language Arts at CSM, "People are always claiming that writing is going downhill and that it's gotten worse and worse and worse… These errors are annoying but I don't see them as a sign of decline. It's a sign of misunderstanding the context."

Continued...

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