Pippa Corbett answered
Using text messaging constantly will have a very real and direct impact on the way you spell.
As the mother of two young girls, I can certainly vouch that I've seen my girls making pretty basic spelling mistakes because they are so reliant on 'text speak' to comunicate.
Overall, I think text messaging has a very negative effect on students' ability to spell.
Text messaging effecting young people's spelling We've all seen messages like 'Thx 4 gr8 time last nite" (Thanks for a great time last night) appearing on our phone or computer.
The mistakes are fairly obvious, but what is truly worrying is that people are often letting this type of spelling slip into their academic work.
I fear that soon, this type of language will be a real threat to communication as it becomes more widespread and acceptable.
The influence of cellphone texting on our spelling
The other danger posed by text messaging is predictive text. This is a form of 'auto-correct' where the messaging software automatically changes or suggests words for you when spelling is incorrect.
Rather than teaching us new spellings which we then pick up (which does happen occasionally), the overwhelming result is a generation that relies on auto-correct to spell things correctly.
Back in the day when people had to look things up in a dictionary, more time was spent learning spelling and committing words to memory.
Nowadays people simply don't bother because they know that even if they get it wrong, a program will fix it for them!
As the mother of two young girls, I can certainly vouch that I've seen my girls making pretty basic spelling mistakes because they are so reliant on 'text speak' to comunicate.
Overall, I think text messaging has a very negative effect on students' ability to spell.
Text messaging effecting young people's spelling We've all seen messages like 'Thx 4 gr8 time last nite" (Thanks for a great time last night) appearing on our phone or computer.
The mistakes are fairly obvious, but what is truly worrying is that people are often letting this type of spelling slip into their academic work.
I fear that soon, this type of language will be a real threat to communication as it becomes more widespread and acceptable.
The influence of cellphone texting on our spelling
The other danger posed by text messaging is predictive text. This is a form of 'auto-correct' where the messaging software automatically changes or suggests words for you when spelling is incorrect.
Rather than teaching us new spellings which we then pick up (which does happen occasionally), the overwhelming result is a generation that relies on auto-correct to spell things correctly.
Back in the day when people had to look things up in a dictionary, more time was spent learning spelling and committing words to memory.
Nowadays people simply don't bother because they know that even if they get it wrong, a program will fix it for them!
