Is text messaging ruining the written English language?

Question

I can barely read many of the questions on this site because they are are written in text message style. Do you know if anyone has taken the new written part of the SAT in text-speak? If so, what score did they get? (Or should they get?)

I also can't imagine anyone keeping a job if they are answering their boss' emails in text talk.

If you are texting your way to success I'd like to hear about it too.

Answer 1

Most of those teenagers will grow up, come into contact with other social groups, slangs and jargons, and will hopefully learn under which circumstances to use which type of speaking and writing.

But I wished they learned to distinguish Chat and Internet forums a bit sooner, though.

Answer 2

Most people use text-speak in casual situations and I highly doubt anyone would ever use this style of writing in formal situations such as e-mailing a boss or a teacher,etc and would never even dream about use text-speak in tests such as the SAT and the ACT, or any test for that matter. So no, I don't think that its ruining the English language as a whole. Nobody ever writes like that outside of the internet or phone,and if they ever did use it outside of technology, they would merely use it for note passing with teens and kids.

Answer 3

I think that text spellings are good for text messages & IM's & that's it!

It shouldn't be excepted as part of the english language within schools though!  

Answer 4

Most people don't care so much about formality on the internet, or while texting. Conventions in spelling and grammar can be overlooked because it's more of a casual atmosphere. In business or scholastic settings, people generally use formality when writing.

Think about it this way: You probably swear and say off-colour things in the presence of your friends. But, most likely, you wouldn't dare make racy remarks around your boss.

Two different vocabularies for two different situations. Same deal with the written word.

Answer 5

This is a common myth often relayed by high-school teachers and is often based on anecdotal evidence rather than on any peer-reviewed investigation. The few studies that have been done on IM communication and texting suggest that users actually have a keen command of both formal and informal varieties of English and are quite comfortable manipulating the them as the context requires. A recent study of a 1.5 million word corpus of IM data shows that only 2.44% of the tokens (ie, 2.44% of the words) are IM-style abbreviations (lol, brb, meh, etc.). Further research shows that IM communication is more closely related to speech rather than to written communication - not surprising considering the real time nature of IM and texting.

There's an informative summary in a University of Toronto publication (Idea&s), volume 3, number 2 here:

http://www.ideasmag.artsci.utoronto.ca/

Here's a direct link to the paper (it's only one page, so take a look!):

http://www.ideasmag.artsci.utoronto.ca/i...

Also, David Crystal has written a couple of books on this issue:

Language and the Internet. CUP. 2006

Txting: the gr8 db8. OUP. 2008

Answer 6

id (i dont) get the point of writting every lil (little) word out wen (when) u can say somethin like lol instead of writting and taking ur (your) time saying laugh out loud or that is funny.....c wat (what) i mean?

Answer 7

People don't talk to other people like they do in text messages. Unless they're honestly that involved with it, it shouldn't affect anything but the messages they send on their phone.