Will Texting Affect Children’s Spelling?
November 7, 2009 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Parenting
As more and more people (children and adults) use text messaging as a means of communication via their cell phones, will we find that correct spelling becomes obsolete?
Many young people use numbers and letters (4 instead of for, u for you) to speed up the process so they often don’t remember the correct spelling.
Adults also have developed this trend, and I find myself (as a teacher, author and English minor) doing the same. However, most adults have learned to correctly spell. Many youngsters have not, so they begin to substitute the text spelling into their work at school.
Image: sxc.hu
Do you feel it’s important that texting may be influencing a generation of non-spellers or “creative” spellers? Will we, who have been taught grammar and spelling, need to learn that type of spelling to communicate with them and to stay in today’s loop?
What will spelling look like in years to come?
As I see it this is just a further bastardization of the English language. The word “Colour” was Amercanized to color, and “Licence” to license, which we now see as making sense. (Or is it sence?)
Anyway, have a gr8 day,
Dave
Proper spelling will not matter in the future due to the rise of “Chinglish”. International business is very common via email, blackberry, texting, and instant messenger. It would be considered highly rude and inappropriate to correct a Chinese or European coworker for grammar or spelling issues when English is not their first language. The same goes for correcting a VP who uses acronyms when communicating via blackberry. Since many people today who work for the same company never meet each other in person or talk on the phone it is rather presumptuous to assume that they were born in or are located in America or the UK. This is amplified by the fact that people may be uncomfortable with speaking a language they know, but can get by with writing it. I know many Chinese who write better English than they speak, and it is still riddled with spelling and grammar errors. But the technicalities do not matter. The goal of any communication is to convey a message that the recipient can understand and take action on. In business we can live with poor spelling and grammar, provided it enables us to add value. You would be hard pressed to find any investors who would put the business on hold to send everyone to English class so their reports and memos would be perfect.
Honestly, from my experiences, it’s adults who mainly shorten words when texting. Most teens are fast enough when texting that we don’t really shorten down words that much — we just use common acronyms like “lol”.