Texting Affecting Writing

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According to a Mashable article back in 2010 “the average teenager sends more than 3,000 texts per month” (Parr Par.1). Within the last six years the abundance of technology, primarily smartphones, has increased greatly. Thus we can assume that the number of texts sent a month has gone up. Michaela Cullington argues in her article “Does Texting Affecting Writing?” that texting does not have any affect on how students write formal papers. With the absurd amount of texts that myself and millions of other teens send out each month it would be logical to consider that texting is affecting how teenagers write formal English papers. The real question is does texting have a positive or negative impact. Texting surprisingly has both a negative and …show more content…
Abbreviations created through texting are called textspeak (Cullington 1). Some examples of these abbreviations are “lol”, “nbd”, and “Bc”. These abbreviations are used extremely often while texting. When a teenager writes his/her paper they may accidentally use a common abbreviation and not even notice. Although this abbreviation will likely be caught while reviewing the paper, the abbreviation has affected how the person writes. This is due to the fact that frequently teenagers who text may not be using full sentences or even correct grammar. “Jacquie Ream, a former teacher…blames the use of acronyms and shorthand in text messages for students’ inability to spell and ultimately to write well” (Cullington 2). As a former teacher Ream had the ability to see first hand how texting was having an affect on the way students were writing. Texting does not require the sender to use correct spelling; many words can be misspelled and still be understood clearly. Many students “are forgetting commas, apostrophes, and even capital letters to being sentences” (Cullington 3). Clearly this could cause teenagers to have poorer writing habits. I am an enormous culprit of forgetting where to place commas and being unsure if I should use “student’s” or “students’” depending on the context of the sentence. Texting has resulted in the loss of my basic knowledge of fundamental …show more content…
“Texting also helps to spark students’ creativity, these authors argue, because they are coming up with new ways to express their ideas” (Cullington 4). Numerous peers of mine have expressed difficulty in brainstorming ideas and they also struggled with how to take their thoughts from their head and put them into their formal paper and have it make sense. Texting has helped teens improve their sentence structure. While texting there is a common practice to type your message in the shortest, most concise way possible. By doing this, humans, specifically teens, who text frequently are better at being direct in their writing; able to portray their idea in the least amount of words possible. The ability to convey your idea in a concise manor is incredibly beneficial to the overall strength of the paper. Over the years I have been forced to read numerous papers from my peers. Every now and then I would have to confront the person and advice them to simply say their point and lose the unnecessary filler words. Out of all the papers very few were covered in filler words. The great majority were straight to the point; an issue I have always struggled with. Texting could have possibly led to this unrecognized skill that many teens could poses. Over the years my knowledge in writing has increased helping me better
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