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 t...