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Sorry, but few are really 'Txting
4 Truble'
By
Whitni Webb
November 14, 2007 | Recently on Fox 13 News there was
a segment by Kerri Kronk called *Txting 4 Truble*. It
came to the conclusion that large quantities of texting
resulted in students using improper grammar at unsuitable
times: like on a school assignment or in the classroom.
While texting has obviously made acronyms like *lol*,
(laugh out loud) *jk*, (just kidding) and *rofl*(rolling
on the floor, laughing) and alternative spellings such
as *Gr8* (great) *2nite* (tonight) and *2moro* (tomorrow)
more common and acceptable, it's silly to say they are
actually ruining our grammar.
These acronyms and alternative spellings are really
like a pop culture language for the technology inclined
youth culture of today. And, as in most cultures, there
are unspoken rules. We all know very well you can't
use *WTF* on a midterm paper. Capitalization and punctuation
have been instilled in us since kindergarten, and a
few oddly spelled words from a text message aren't going
to deprogram us. Text messages still have to make sense,
(who really isn't going to realize what *2nite* means?)
And for those of us who haven't figured out this cultural
code, cell phones have been programmed to help you out.
Cell phones now have many inbuilt programs to keep
us using the correct grammar if we so please. My phone,
a very basic one from Verizon Wireless, automatically
capitalizes the first part of the sentence, any proper
noun, and fixes any misspelled words. The writing is
also faster; it has a program that puts in automatically
the word the phone thinks I am going to use, so I can
write more without using any acronyms to save time.
And texting is not the only source for visual communication
in people's lives. Cell phones are a minor piece of
equipment in our days of technology filled communication.
Facebook and MySpace, e-mail, AIM, all are computer
associated communication, and it is the computer that
spawned the acronyms used so commonly now in texting.
And every one of these inventions came with a spell
checker.
And as for the claim that student's aren't using correct
grammar on their assignments, what happened to their
Spell Check button? The segment showed a paper a student
had turned in which he or she had forgotten periods
and capitalization. I'm sorry, but saying that texting
caused that is a serious reach. Extreme laziness on
the student's part would be more realistic. I mean,
he couldn't hit a button? Everything today is typed
on a computer using a word processing application, and
all of these applications have spell check. If any student
fails to use them, that is not texting's fault.
I mean, God knows I'll spell check this article before
I'm done.
NW
MS |
