A researcher suggests 'techspeak' is corrupting grammar skills
By Mark Huffman, ConsumerAffairs.com
In his second term, President Theodore Roosevelt tried to “reform” U.S. spelling, to make it simpler and easier to write words. But what Roosevelt failed to do, the practice of “texting” may succeed in doing. And not everyone thinks that's a good thing.
Drew Cingel, a doctoral student at Northwestern University, says the group of adolescents known as “tweens” are forming poor language skills and he blames texting. When people send texts, they tend to shorten words, use abbreviations and initials.
These usages quickly spill over into everyday usage. Cingel says more tweens are performing poorly on grammar tests.
Gr8!
"They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for great, or an initial, like LOL for laugh out loud," said Cingel. "An example of an omission that tweens use when texting is spelling the word would, w-u-d."
Cingel said the use of these shortcuts while texting, especially if they do a lot of texting, may hinder a tween's ability to switch between techspeak and the normal rules of grammar. The consequences can be severe, such as not getting a job because you wrote “i wud b a gr8 worker:)” on a job application.
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