By Thomas Edmundson, Managing Editor
“When r u going to go their.” This was a text I received the other day. I understood what the person meant to say, but that doesn’t make up for this person’s lack of grammar. Texting has its benefits, but it is leading to a society with poor grammar and poor spelling abilities.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone uses the wrong “your” or “you’re,” or “their,” “there,” “they’re,” or uses little abbreviations like “u” instead of “you” and “r” instead of “are.” While this may not seem important for some people when they are sending a quick text, it can turn into a problem in the long run.
Texting has given people the ability to send instant messages to others anywhere in the world. It is a great tool for quick communication and short conversations. People use shorthand and abbreviations in texts, paying little attention to detail just so they can send a message a split second faster.
In most situations, texts like these are OK. The person on the receiving end can understand the basic meaning and move on. A problem arises, however, when people let a lackadaisical attitude toward grammar in texts find its way into more important things.
I see it all too much when I am reading over other people’s papers, even when I am reading the newspaper. People seem to forget about the simple things like capitalization, punctuation and apostrophes. While these errors may not all come from texting habits, I attribute many of them to constant texting.
As the common saying goes, practice makes perfect. It can also work in the opposite direction. If you practice using the wrong grammar while texting, it is inevitable that errors will show up in other writing.
Texting has also contributed to a decline in people’s grammar and spelling through autocorrect. People rely on their phones to pick up on any misspellings and correct them instantaneously. This can hurt a person in two ways.
One is that people no longer have to know exactly how to spell a word. As long as they are close enough, the phone can usually find the correct word and insert it into the text. The problem with this is there is no autocorrect when you are writing an in-class essay, filling out a test or even when writing a nice handwritten note. If people become accustomed to spelling words “almost right” with autocorrect, they will not be prepared to spell words exactly right when there is no autocorrect.
Another problem with autocorrect is that people trust it so much they will not read back over a text before they send it. In my experience, it is always good to proof what you write, no matter how insignificant it is. Autocorrect has a tendency to place the wrong word sometimes, and if sent, it can convey the wrong message or make the sender look ignorant.
Texting has sped up communication in our society and has provided us with many benefits, but people need to slow down and take the little things into account when sending a text. You have to remember that the way you write – whether in a text, a paper or an email – affects the way people perceive you.