When I signed up for Twitter one of the first things I noticed, and was most confused by, was that tweets are limited to 140 characteristics. In a world where we are texting and emailing abbreviations are becoming all too common. A friend of mine is a substitute teacher in middle school English and I have heard stories from her about student using “text speak” in essays and assignments. I was expecting to come across more of this when I did research for the digital bibliography since I was reading articles about technology in the classroom. Interestingly enough when I was looking up the use of blogs none of the journal articles I read addressed this problem, and I read written by elementary teachers through college professors. More of what I saw praised the fact that blogs and texting got people writing at all, regardless of how grammatically incorrect it may have been. When I started looking specifically for articles on the decline of grammar, punctuation, capitalization and such most of what I found was about half and half, some saying it’s a problem and some not at all concerned. One article in particular exemplified both sides of the argument from teachers’ points of view.
My initial reaction was that students need to learn to write correctly for professional situations. Texting with your friends is very different from having a conversation with a boss. But then I realized that I have texted my boss. I’ve sent texts letting him know what supplies we needed at the off site program I was doing, because so much of what we do is in the community cellphones are sometimes the only way we reach each other. Then it occurred to me that I joined Twitter for class, full well knowing my teacher and classmates would be reading my tweets. As I gave it more thought I realized a few more things; one, that as much as I wanted to be right in my initial feeling that textspeak was ruining youth’s ability to write as an academic I have to present all sides of the argument, even though I pretty much proved myself wrong. The second lesson I took from the articles I read and personal experiences I had was that it’s not so much about how you communicate, whether it’s in person, over the phone or electronically as it is what you communicate, especially in a professional setting. While I still get annoyed when people don’t take the time to proof read emails and leave out capitalization I am more accepting of acronyms and shortened spellings. It seems that I need to just get over my pet peeve because texts and twitter are how people will be communicating regardless of the setting, at least IMHO.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
I’ve often wondered if the increasing blur between work and non-work boundaries is contributing to this kind of acceptance about informal communication. I don’t think you should get over your pet peeve; I think different media for communication bring with it different expectations for both writer and reader, and really depend on the kind of relationship you already have with a reader (or want to build).
Email is a weird thing. I’ve noticed that the first email is usually the most formal–it includes a salutation, usually good grammar, paragraph structure, and a closing signature. As the thread progresses, these conventions break down, to the point that the last message could consist of one word, with no greeting or signature. I notice this with more regularity the last year or so, at least to email I send/receive. I tend to think its a result of that blurring I mention above…email seems torn between the formalities of letter writing and the short, instant, informal nature of instant messenger and txting.
IMHO.
June 14th, 2009
IMHO, FTW
June 23rd, 2009