Lain

Not only this bothers me but concerning it's nationwide...
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:-( Texting shorthand showing up in schoolwork
'IT'LL JUST COME OUT BY ITSELF' (LOL!), ONE VALLEY TEEN EXPLAINS
By Julie Sevrens Lyons
Mercury News
Article Launched: 04/25/2008 01:30:25 AM PDT

OMG. Hieroglyphic text-speak is slipping into homework.

A national look at middle- and high-schoolers found that two-thirds of students have accidentally used instant-messaging style in their academic work, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

A quarter admitted they have used smiley faces and other emoticons in their papers. Half confessed to informal punctuation and grammar, and four in 10 take typing shortcuts such as "LOL" to express "laughing out loud."

Can NE1 say "Big fat F"?

"Now the teachable moment for parents and teachers is to talk about what makes informal writing and what makes formal writing - and what's appropriate in each of those spheres," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at the Pew project.

Lenhart said she "isn't worried" about this generation. "This is what I would term a new slang," she said. "We've always had slang. This is different only in that the language comes out of text instead of spoken language, which is how most of our slang has emerged in the past."

The findings don't surprise local students and teachers, who say that instant messaging has become the primary form of communication for a generation weaned on BlackBerry and Motorola Razr phones. They often don't realize what comes out when they let their fingers do the talking.

"I'll forget I'm writing a formal paper. I'll replace 'for' with the number 4," said Vivek Musinipally, a senior at San Jose's Leland High School who is bound for the University of California-Berkeley. "It'll just come out by itself without me thinking about it. But when I proofread, I laugh when I see it."

Yet the trend toward more casual writing in what should be serious academic missives doesn't exactly have parents or teachers ROTFL - rolling on the floor laughing.

In the new Pew report, in which 700 teens and their parents were interviewed, the majority of the adults said writing skills are more important now than they were a generation ago.

But many students don't double-check their writing. Others do not see any problem with the phrases that they IM every day.

Teachers are less than thrilled.

Michelle Balmeo, the journalism adviser at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, said her students - primarily juniors - have had it ingrained in them not to use acronyms in their formal papers. But their e-mails to her are usually loaded with slang.

"I've gotten e-mail from kids where I'm like: I have no idea what that kid just said," she said. When one included the term IMO, or "in my opinion" in a message, she thought the student was referring to emo - a genre of rock 'n' roll popular with teens.

Brian Barr, an English instructor at California High School in San Ramon, got fed up with terms like "BC" or "because" popping up in student papers. "It's laziness," he said.

So he pinned a large poster to his classroom wall that reads "No fast-food English" and points out phrases that are unacceptable in school papers. Things like 4, 2, &, R, U, but also non-words or bad words like "sucks" and "wanna."

"That's not really IMing," Barr said, "that's just bad English."
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Source: [Link]

migamoo

Uh, I've never known myself to do this in a paper. But I do know a lot of people, when I was in my composition classes in college did this. I just cannot understand it.

TheAngel

I'm an English major and things like this just annoy me. It's such ignorance and so lazy for people to do things like this. Especially in college, when you know better than to do things like that. It shows me that American schools systems are failing their students if they can get to college and still have this behavior.

Lain

When I was a teenager, I wouldn't dream of writing like that in my paper. I saw the article in this morning's paper and it's scary with the advancement of technology that kids get so used to the shortcuts.

Although the only time I would actually use the word "sucks" and "wanna" is if I'm writing a story and have to use dialog.

*Ledi*

I try to never shorten words in that way. I type words correctly even in text messages, because it annoys me when people don't.

I don't know about you guys, but when someone types/writes that way, it makes them seem less intelligent to me. I just don't understand why people can't type an extra letter or two. It really doesn't take that long.

vc318

Hah! Kids are starting to carry cellphones and even IPods as soon as they're out of the womb so it doesn't surprise me that these middle and high-school students think that this text messaging shorthand is like another language to them and is acceptable. Fact is, our kids are growing up fast and education has taken a backseat on their "priority list". Texting all day is the way to go and is so cool in their eyes. Even as an elementary teacher myself, we don't even have time to teach our students basic writing mechanics because the state feels it is more important to "train" them to pass some stupid state-wide test on material they'll probably forget about by the summertime anyway. It's really sad. Parents are largely to blame, I think. Parents think it's cute to spoil their kids with this stuff but are too lazy and quick to blame someone else when something goes wrong. In the case of this text messaging, the parents don't even take a minute to ask where the heck are their children learning about this stuff nor do they think it's a big deal. I've watched Super Nanny enough to see how many reckless parents have absolutely NO clue that their own kids are chatting it up with guys two or three times their age even online and such! My point is, should we even be surprised that our kids are doing this? Not really. If the parents don't care, then why should anyone else care? If the school board says you don't need to learn how to write because computers have "Spell Check" then why should the children fret about it? The parents are too tired to be bothered and in the end, the teacher will probably be blamed or reprimanded for it.

pacifierrocks

This seriously bugs me to no end. I do agree with the teacher that said it's laziness. It's one thing to do it on a cell phone but come on. How hard is it to really write out words? I also think it's going to hurt them later on if they do send a professor, boss, etc an email with those shorthands. Who really wants to hire someone who writes "4 u".

I don't write in text shorthand but I'll abbreviate some words like apartment or appointment. Honestly, I hate it when my friends send me a text in shorthand. But I hate it even more when I'm talking to someone over IM or an email and it's in shorthand. There's no character limit. Go wild. Spell out the words.

sunnykerr

Is it laziness or just plain ignorance? I mean, if your daily mode of communication "requires" you to use shorthand... I don't know. Maybe proper English is like any "learned" language. You gotta use it or you lose it.

Not that I'm anyone to point a finger, because I have read my own writings, and the mistakes are everyone. But it really does bug me when people use short hand. Probably because I can't read it. I don't like to sound stuff out and have a stab at what was meant by it.

Just like I hate it when people write in weird caps/no caps writing (YoU kNow...) or don't capitalize what ought to be capitalized. (If I'm writing about Tom and John, i'm not writing about tom and john...) Bleh.

While I'm on the soap box, can I just say? There is a direction, their is possessive, and they're is where "they" are. Your is possessive, you're is what "you" are. And "its" is also possessive, while "it's" is what it is.

Grrrrr.

Sorry, I'm sure I make those mistakes twelve times a day myself, but I've been proofreading all day and I want to know who teaches these so-called professional writers how to write!!!!!!!!

Lain

Now that irritates me.

I can understand if you use this shorthand (although probably wouldn't be a good idea when you're writing papers ):


But when writing like how it was mentioned in the article, I mean, that is a bit of laziness to me.

TheAngel

Well, for me it's a lot of the texting shorthand that I just don't understand. I see it on Myspace and a lot of the other social networking sites or in social blogs and the like. To me it's laziness and ignorance. They're lazy because they refuse to learn (or they know and refuse to use) proper grammar. And ignorant because they think it's just as acceptable as any other form of writing. I'm not asking for Tolstoy or something that belongs in an academic journal. I know I have horrible spelling, but some of the things are just ridiculous. For example:
UR= Your, You're, and You are
4= For
2= To and Too
Cuz= Because
kno= Know (Is it really that hard to add one letter?)
Every1, no1, etc.
Using @ instead of at and leaving the g off of words, somethin, nothin, etc.
I just really don't get the point of it. It's so hard to read something written like that. It's different writing school notes in short hand or transcribing in short hand only to write it out later, but doing that in a formal paper, no way.

vc318

Whoops, I'm guilty. I forget how much I use this in the threads I start. Sometimes I don't even realize it.

Even t.v. glamorizes this though. Wasn't there just a commercial about a grandmother and her granddaughter on a cellphone and the mom was wondering why they kept speaking to her in text shorthand? I think it was from AT&T. It was a funny commercial but still....

migamoo

If I'm online instant messaging with someone, I'm more inclined to use some shorthand. But I'm talking about BRB, LOL, etc.

But I agree, I definitely think a lot of the blame goes onto the parent because they really don't seem to care about their children these days. They give them whatever toy they want and let them go. And I agree about the school systems too. I remember right before I graduated high school, they were implementing more standardized tests, which I didn't have to take!, but you just knew that teachers would be more inclined to teach what would be on the test, not what the child really should learn.

sunnykerr

It comes back to government, then. Because what is taught and standardized tests... that's decided by policy and by funding.

It's such a shame, too. Because this texting style is a real disgrace. Hundreds of years of evolution and increasing literacy levels all undone by a fad. It's sad.