Texting vs. Writing

There is a long standing debate about whether or not electronic forms of writing is slowly killing grammar and punctuation. Since it is young people that are thought to be the ones utilizing technology, it is them that are being looked at to prove or disprove this theory. Basically it is believed that teenagers are being lax with their school work because they are lax with their electronic language. USA today published an article about a study done on the fear of this trend. Readers of the USA article would be terrified that within the next ten years all forms of writing would inevitably lapse into text speak.

However, if readers take the time to peruse the 83 page study of teens and their writing habits, the future would not look so bleak. While there are a few teenagers that claim they have used emoticons in school papers, which is horrifying, the study doesn't look at the either the GPA of these students, nor does it specify what the assignments were. Was the assignment a formal research paper, or in a class assignment that doesn't weigh heavily as a grade? Furthermore, the study finds that students are most guilty of improper punctuation and capitalization. If I'm not mistaken, those are mistakes that students have been making since the beginning of school, even for the baby boomers that grew up in a technologically free zone. Don't believe me?

Not to say that it is okay for students to make mistakes, it is merely understandable; they are students. That's the point...they're still learning. As this study points out, the majority of teenagers see a difference between electronic writing, and formal writing. If anything more teenagers are writing now than ever before, and that is exciting.