Texting and Literacy

Many people have become worried lately that text messaging among young people is having a negative impact on their literacy skills. However, when the spelling and punctuation of 11 and 12-year old texters and non-texters were compared by researchers at the Department of Communication and Science at City University in London, no significant differences between the two groups were found.

Being fast and concise is important when texting as it saves time and space. Lots of abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons are used. This ‘language’ can be easily read and written for texters, but not so for non-texters.

The texting debate and the possible harmful effects of texting started a few years ago when teachers began to see texting language in some of their students’ exam papers. In one case, a 13-year-old Scottish girl became famous when she wrote an entire description of her summer holidays in text language. A sample of the essay was sent to a national newspaper by her teacher. This prompted readers to send in hundreds of letters giving their opinion.