Is Texting Making Us Bad Writers?

In this day in age just about everyone has a cell phone and therefor just about everyone texts. Of course, as college students the world between our social life and academic life are intertwined with one another. This begs the question “Is Texting Making Us Bad Writers?” My personal thought and immediate response would be, No.

As intelligent beings we know the difference between casual dialect and professional dialect. Naturally we are less likely to use professional dialect in our texts because we are speaking to friends who know us on a personal level and most of the time know what we are trying to say even if we abbreviate extensively, which is basically all text speech is. We abbreviate to the point that sometimes all we use are acronyms; ttyl brb. In.John McWhorter's TED Talk he explains how the term "LOL" has actually evolved from meaning "laugh out loud" to being a placeholder or an acknowledgement in text conversations. "LOL" is a pragmatic particle which, in definition, is how real people use words in real life, in a practical sense. In addition, we know that we are expected to behave and write in a professional manner in school, so we do.

Secondly, one may argue that texting is detrimental to spelling. I believe that all texting is, is being able to put forth an idea and communicate as quickly as possible, which takes a certain level of mental capacity to be able to know two versions of one word, the abbreviated version and the correctly spelled version. Most phones today provide us with automatic spell check and although we may attempt to abbreviate a long word chances are we will be presented with the actual long, correctly spelled version. In addition, we are using phonics more than we realize to figure out how the word may be spelled. In article Can Texting Help With Spelling? it mentioned "A British study published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning found a positive correlation between texting and literacy, concluding that texting was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children." We are not dumb, were mankind, we learn constantly whether or not we are aware of it. Each time we use spell check we are given an opportunity to learn how to correct our mistakes, repetition will eventually teach us how to spell things even on a subconscious level. Thus, texting may actually provide us with a pathway to be able to spell better.

In conclusion, we as human beings are more intelligent than we ourselves even thought. We are forced in this generation to learn two different forms of language text speech and formal English writing. In turn, we are expanding our horizons just by doing normal everyday activities. 

Just how we see the term "LOL" can actually have alternative meanings, so does the above image, gets you thinking. You can find MORE comics like these buy licking the link.