Texting has become our way of communicating to multiple people simultaneously. We can talk to someone on Facebook, have a real time conversation, and text all at the same time. While this broad channel allows us to more efficiently spread the ideas and thoughts that we want spread, the time and energy to make these thoughts grammatically correct just is not there.
While we can hold those three simultaneous communications exchanges, what we write will reflect the hurry with which we wrote it. Short hand has been around for centuries, and serves the legal and business communities well. Without it, the stenographer in a courtroom would never be able to keep accurate and reliable notes. But one needs to learn how to write intelligently before they learn shorthand.
Over the course of a person’s life in this age, the vast majority of what they will write will never be graded as it is mostly personal correspondence, much of it on the internet, and by telephone. When the style of that majority of their writing shifts from plain English to TXT, they will become better versed at “abbreving” than at writing. While our educational system is assumably becoming better through the application of technology to the classroom, Trending Studies show that from 1973 to 2011 that average SAT Critical Reading Scores have dropped over 30 points. When I peruse my own Facebook, I can find in the front feed, over 20 grammar/mechanics/spelling errors that any 3rd grader could tell you were wrong.
Let’s perform an experiment. The next sentence will be typed in plain English; while the next paragraph will be a carbon copy of the same idea but translated into modern texting shorthand. Picture this message going out with the address saying “2DA Ambasdr frm GRMny”
With problems confronting the United States today that require more and better communications skill with our international partners, the last thing that we need to do is dumb down our messages to the point of being incomprehensible.
W probs confronting d United st8z 2day dat Rquire mor n btr comms skill W r intl prtners, d lst thng dat we nd 2 doS dum dwn r msgs 2 d point of bn incomprehensible. (apparently there is not a txt counterpart for incomprehensible)
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