According to CNN, an education commission in Ireland is making the claim that text messages are posing a threat to writing standards amongst Irish schoolchildren. My gosh, what next: the claim that excessive consumption of Guinness will cause drunkenness?
With text messages limited at 160 characters, it’s no surprise that users attempt to cram in as much as possible. One look at any online forum frequented by teenagers, and you need a dictionary to decipher the many acronyms and abbreviations used – not to mention have a good imagination trying to understand much of the grammar. IMHO our online language skills are deteriorating. Whether this is related to txt msging or not I don’t know, or maybe kids these days have developed an ingenious way of writing in plain text without requiring encryption. But the trends are definitely worrying!
Interestingly though, not everyone believes instant messaging is bad. A note on Techdirt claims that IM has helped kids feel more comfortable with writing, with the page having drawn interesting comments from others. Some other people have also made similar claims.
But wind back to 2003? Carl Sharp certainly had a problem with IM.
When on IM I always try to type as proper as possible : because typing is fast and I don’t save much time otherwise, but also because I believe language is something we should cherish. Abbreviations are great used in moderation, and with 160 characters only they can be a saviour – but letting it become your writing habit is the danger.
And that’s where people should be careful (or shot, for writing badly).
