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It's OK to keep AIMing
fooby12 writes "According to the Univeristy of Toronto instant messaging does not hurt the grammar of the people who use it. From the article: "With 80% of Canadian teenagers using instant messaging and adopting its unique linguistic shorthand, many teachers and parents are concerned about the medium's potential to corrupt kids' grammar. But instant messaging doesn't deserve its bad reputation as a spoiler of syntax, suggests a new study from the University of Toronto.""
My first thought, of course, was:
{o,o}
|)__)
-"-"-
O RLY?
{o.o}
|)_(|
-"-"-
YA RLY
{o,o}
(__(|
-"-"-
NO WAI!
(Courtesy of the usual suspects)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
What changes when people write on Messenger is mainly spelling. Spelling is part of the lexicon, and the lexicon is not "grammar". Grammar consists of phonology, morphology, and syntax, and I've never seen any of those parts of the English language being butchered by netspeak.
OMG, I am so 1337! C my l337 grammer skilz!
The title of the story has it all wrong. 'lol' does not require an exclamation mark. It is implied. These lingusts should learn how to IM. lol
i wuz wurried that im'n 2 much wuz m/king me 4get gd gremmer.
I've used AIM and IRC excessively in the past few years, and it has led me to getting a nearly perfect score on my English SAT exams. Just because some p30p3l tlk lik this dosnt meen that omg all of u r going 2 be liek th1s. Some people may actually improve based on the widespread use of IMs, just like emails or passing notes in class...
- dshaw
Is much worse for spelling than instant messaging ever was. If I spell a word wrong and it gets fixed then I never know I spelled it wrong. I doubt there are many people out there who think they are typing correcting when really they are using net speak.
Dooom
It ain't done had no effect on me. I'm gonna IM 4ever.
Careful where you keep that chat history active though. Never know what your sysadmin finds interesting.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
My mom always complained, and I've finally matured enough to see why. I used to have decent hand writing. But now that I've gone thru comps sci in college and site 8 hours a day at work on a pc, my hand writing sucks. I find myself printing always, no cursive. I find myself abbreviating and using those stupid instant messaging shorthand. It's terrible. The most annoying part is I can type 100+ wpm, and can't write anywhere near that, so I am thinking about the next sentence before I've even handwritten the first ... and thus a lot of times I loose my thoughts. Good news for me though is that I don't think the art of good hand-writing is coming back anytime soon, so I think I'll be ok.
The ending of a sentence with a preposition is a practice up with which I will not put. - W. Churchill (?)
Then again, it's not like the people in question were ever likely to have great skills at written composition, is it?
Well now I know this is BS, because whenever I am speaking to a Canadian they mispell common words like color and flavor! For some reason they put a u in between the o and the r. It must be some new l33t speak or something...
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
But my brain is 'asploding' from the posts so far in this thread with their 'lolz' and their 'plz' and their 'orly'. Get off my lawn, yada yada.
From a business perspective, I've seen college graduates emailing using the typical IM abbreviations -- but typically, when reminded that it's not appropriate, I'd say that the grammar of these new hires tends to be as good or better than some of what I see elsewhere. At least they've been communicating in a non-verbal format.
If anything, I find that those who have IM'd a lot tend to have an easier time of getting their message across clearly in emails -- maybe it's due to their understanding of the shortfalls of text communication.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Back in the '80s, parents were worried that kids would try to copy Max Headroom's stuttering.
...WTF were they thinking? S-s-s-seriously! No-No-No one would ever t-t-t-talk like th-th-that.
(I need a Coca Cola! Haah!)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's the lack of punctuation and capitilization that makes me cringe most of the time. Spelling rarely bothers me due to my own love of typoes.
And obviously my grammar has suffered horribly. I doubt any of you can understand me right now, in fact.
Ironic that I misspelt misspell isn't it?
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
I do not claim to be a fan of books (unless they are the O'rielly type) but I read my fair share of Hardy Boys and the likes in my younger youth. I can speak at abbreviated as msot on IM, but I dare say my grammar is in no danger. (my spelling still sucks however).
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
i was going through old western union telegrams here at work from the 50's and 60's, and they're rife with shorthand, slang, and bad grammar.
Not much has changed in 50 years, regardless of the medium
I'll try tags in the future.
BAD headline! BAD!
NOT AIM!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What makes them think that chatting is going to cause the kids grammer to be worse? After looking at some of the papers coming in from kids I don't think that their grammer could get much worse no matter what they did. Of course, some of the teachers that I know spend so much time chatting too, they probably think that writing like that is normal.
The article is correct in that instant messaging doesn't affect a person's grammar at all. That being said, what instant messaging and the internet in general do show is the extremely sad state of English grammar today. Before the internet and instant messaging people simply wouldn't write to each other as much or as publicly. Now that the lowest common denominator has access to the internet the problem is thrown into our faces. It's impossible to surf the net without witnessing an average of 5 apostrophe errors a minute. I honestly don't think that grammar has gotten worse, we just never noticed it before.
But instant messaging doesn't deserve its bad reputation as a spoiler of syntax, suggests a new study from the University of Toronto.
I vaguely remember my English teachers telling me not to start sentences with "but." I think that may also be a run-on sentence.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Eh?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
telegram abbrvs not responsible for poor victorian grammar STOP shorthand essential part of communication STOP language shaped by effeciency STOP.
Children don't have to formally learn grammar. A child learning a language natively will by definition speak with perfect grammar even without schooling, because in the science of linguistics rules of grammar are based on what is heard in the vernacular of the language in question, not what some pundit sets down by fiat.
If you're asking whether children are still taught prescriptivist rules, that's a whole 'nother matter.
Could it get worse if it's bad to begin with?
Maybe bad grammer isn't a bad thing. The main point is everyone can understand you. What's a difference between "me and my friend" and "my friend and I" to someone who doesn't have a rule book in their head? Maybe it's evolution of language.. losing the unecessary fluff and I guess unecessary letter with it.
I am a fairly capable writer, and when the need arises to express a point clearly and with some creative use of language, I usually am up for the task.
havin said that, when i m on im im concenred about getting the point across quickly and with the least amout of keyboard travel as possible, spellin and grammar take a backseat to speed and more importntaly flow of conversation....
Ok, back into "refined mode". I do find it interesting that I don't bother to correct spelling while conversing on IM, particularly words like "teh -> the", "fro -> for", and "who - > how". I suppose context fills in the gaps and helps the conversation flow along.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I never really learned to type well until I got into IM. I even tried the typing classes in school, still couldn't do it well. Only after extended use did I notice that my typing speed went up dramatically. I tend to think that it was because it was something I wanted to do (talk to friends), not something I HAD to do (typing class). Grammar didn't suffer at all, though I started much later than kids do now (late high school vs. 5th grade). I'd say as long as the schools are teaching them good grammar, it will come through in the typing.
It's all geek to me, man! :P
Of course, studies also show that 150 years ago English was a whole lot better spoken and written than it is today - you know, top hats and tea time and Ma'ams and Sirs all 'round. Hell, barkeeps in the Wild West talk more eloquently than I do (and I think that's the first time the word 'eloquently' has passed through my head in years). This is obviously due to instant messaging and IRC. If I lived in the US I'd be filing a lawsuit against... whoever maintains this series of tubes.
Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but half the people at my school use IM-speak even in class assignments (as in minimum-6-page-paper-plus-bibliography type assignments)... and I somehow doubt that stuff like Wal-Mart's latest back-to-school "Foreign Language" ad thing – the one showing various cell phones, pagers, etc. with horrible IM-speak – is really helping much. Although maybe it's just me?
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Aiming at what?
Blatently ripped from Eats, Shoots & Leaves :)
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours?
Jill
Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jill
People used to write telegrams in short, incomplete sentences in order to save money on the transmission by reducing the length of the message, and as far as I know it didn't hurt anybody's grammar.
Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn heaven.
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep the fbi off our backs, we'd appreciate it.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n.
I had to go to college to learn my three R's.
.we read.
The question is, why didn't you learn those at home before you entered grade school, as most in previous ages had?
I cannot remember a time at which I could not read. In fact, by the age of about 6 I could read the English vernacular of many centuries and many English subcultures, simply because, in my home. .
KFG
Agreed, title sounds like my mom trying to be hip with the "computer jargon"
You spelled colour and flavour wrong. And I have never seen any Canadians spell them colouur or flavouur, so I don't know what you are talking about with this extra u.
When I took my first English class at college, the instructor would ask me why I would a think a particular sentence grammar was correct. I told her it sounded correct. In the past, I had school teachers who threw a fit with that answer. But my college instructor taught me how to recognize what sounded correct to the corresponding rules of grammar.
You mean reading, writing, and arithmetic? I don't know about grammar, but it's apparent spelling is not taught anymore.
(n/t)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The most annoying part is I can type 100+ wpm, and can't write anywhere near that...
Who can!? You realize, I hope, that it takes years of experience with shorthand to get to writing that fast (though some savants have gotten up to 350 wpm).
Normal handwriting tops out at about 50 wpm for people good at it, according to what I've read.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I've been AIMing for years, and I can write a coherent sentance. In fact, with the latest speech-to-text programs, I don't even have to use AIM shorthand...i can just speak and dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
I don't particularly care what or how people talk to each other when IM'ing. The problem is that when they try to use the same constructs and shorthands in a different context (e-mail, say), they come across like half-wits.
If studies also indicate they are perfectly capable of using decent english (or whatever) but just choose not...
c.
Log in or piss off.
And what were they considering to do about it? Ban IMing in Canada?
;).
What are kids going to do to increase their grammar if they can't IM their friends? Sure some will write stories, journals and poetry but that isn't going to be a majority of kids. If they aren't practicing language in one way or another than their language skills will be far worse than "tainted IM language."
This is just another case of "oh no, the internet is evil" just like rock and roll was evil in the '50s O_o (what would that be without IMing? two "O's" and an underscore?). Netspeak is almost like learning a second language, a lot easier to learn but it's more dynamic and creative than any other language that I know of and that could be because I only know a few spoken languages
Actually, I think using chat rooms when I was younger and ultimately IM-ing has made me a much better typist. It improved my skills so that I am able to type quickly and accurately. Poor grammar and writing skills exist whether you are using pen, pencils, paper, or computers. It is a sign of not caring, not of the medium. You can write shorthand, scribble on a scrap piece of paper, etc. just as easy as you can type gibberish.
the problem
with IM
is it makes me speak
in short choppy sentences
[nt]
I use AIM all teh time and I nvr make ne misteaks. I catch everyting and keep myself from mispelling when I talk about software enchantments and righting custom functinos with my fiends and co-workers. ;-)
The question is, why didn't you learn those at home before you entered grade school, as most in previous ages had?
Because the school system misdiagnosed my hearing problem as mental retardation and I had to be bussed to special schools to learn nothing. The school system gets three times as much money for a special ed student than a regular and they didn't want to reclassify me. Never mind that my reading skill level in the seventh grade was at college level since I was compulsive reader as young child. (Which is surprising since my parents never read at all.) I never went to high school and stayed home for four years as I taught myself as I read everything I could get my hands. The local adult high school program sent me off to the community college since it would take me five years to get my diploma. It took me only four years to get my associate degree in General Education. That was in 1994. I'm currently two classes away from getting an associate degree in computer programming. Go figure.
You mean reading, riting, and rithmetic? You're right... spelling isn't taught anymore. :P
. . .bussed to special schools to learn nothing.
Bingo! We have a winner.
KFG
One of the points a teacher once impressed on me is that the English language is a "living" language - new words and new usage are central to that definition as "living". The English language is a language of usage. If enough people use the language in a certain way, then that way of speaking or writing becomes acceptable. For example, I can google on a subject if I need more information. Erm, how do I AltaVista something? Oh, wait; AltaVista isn't defined as a verb nowadays, but Google is, or at least google is (Google is a proper name, of course).
Now, Latin and Hebrew are good examples of dead languages. One Rabbi I studied under told me that the closest you could come in Hebrew to saying "Jumbo Jet" might literally be translated as "big silver bird that flies fast". Those are dead languages; any unacceptable use of grammar or syntax is incorrect.
English, however, adapts and grows to accomodate the concepts and lifestyle of its users - hence, googling, IM'ing, and a whole host of other newfound verbs and nouns which weren't in the lexicon a decade ago. If online chat clients encourage people to find briefer ways to express themselves, perhaps this is simply English evolving into a more compact, precise form.
Where the hell do you work? Sure I wouldn't want to see those abbreviations in a company-wide e-mail or any document or any comment in source code, but where I work we use abbreviations like 'lol' and 'wth' all the time in IM conversations. Isn't that just the normal way of using IM clients? ...it helps if many of your co-workers are current or former MMORPG players...
Does nobody see the error or did I just kick in an open door?
If you are ever planning on learning a second language (required in Canada, recommended anywhere in the world), knowing the rules of grammar of your first language are incredibly helpful. My grade 9 French teacher tried to teach us the difference between subjects and objects, and how to conjugate verbs according to them, but we were unable to even pick out what the subjects & objects of a sentence were in English, let alone French.
That woman spent one month teaching us English grammar, at which point everything she was trying to teach us about French became clear and simple.
I would also posit that grammar should still be taught in elementary school. My wife has a degree in English Rhetoric and Professional Writing, and has chastized me about my incorrect use of words. Now that I know the rules, anything breaking them grates on me, lowering my opinion of the person using those terms. How hard is it to learn the difference between me (object), myself (reflexive object) and I (subject)?
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I'm not sure about grammar, as I've been able to receive perfect scores on standardized writing/grammar tests, but instant messaging has actually improved my spelling. Granted, I turned on the spelling feature when I installed GAIM, and it has improved my spelling by clearly indicating when I'm writing a word incorrectly.
Fun Zoid RPG
Chaucer:
That it was May thus dremed me
In time of love and jollite
That al thyng gynneth waxen gay
For there is neither busk nor hay
In May that it nyl shrouded ben,
And it with new leves wryen.
These greves eke recoveren grene,
That dry in wynter ben to sen,
And the erthe waxeth proude withal
For swete dewes that on it falle . . .
'Tweener Net
in mAY i hd a drem
like a stry it seems
i luv it now lol
tht all that ssht is kewl
May has these prety leeves
Fck hey its green like sleves
Winter sukked so flipin cold
gimme a light i feel so old
i duno and i dont care
aint a shame that i live here
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This isn't meant to be a "racist" or anti-outsourcing rant but...
why is it that so many people from India use the "u" and "r" shortening in semi-formal business communication? I was wondering if it was a prevelance of IMing there...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I'm much HAPPIER online. But then I knew I was a freak.
ROTFLMAO
Wow, I thought this tagging beta was pretty cool at first. But now it just ends up being used to answer every submission that ends with a yes or no question with both a yes and a no and to add a "duh" tag to every single topic geeks like to pretend they already posessed an encyclopedic (wikipedic?) knowledge of.
It's getting old.
Language is not static; would it be that bad if it would change ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Even though I wince at the egregious abuse of the language by my co-workers in the technical profession and their various bosses, their work is *light-years* ahead of what is 'average' in our society. We get a warped perspective working in an industry that's driven by skullwork; Even the people we consider disturbingly slow are actually, usually, above average. I'm forcibly reminded of this fact when I interact with various members of my family or my inlaws - being firmly entrenched in 'averageness'... it's even more distressing when they decide to craft emails and mass-mail them to the family. *shudder*.
Thinking outside my Head
Gud 4u. Mi Grmmr gud too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Best Windows Freeware
Is "typoes" spelled with an e?
The reason is doesnt affect grammar is because there is no option. Last time someone told me a joke in person, I wasnt really sure what to do since LOL just doesnt sound right when you say it.
The report is consistent with my experience as a university professor. The biggest problem I've seen is students who don't know when to use netspeak and when to be formal. I have, on more than one occasion, received this kind of email: "hey i need to talk to u because ur class is closed and i cant get in." Those emails do not receive responses. Why would I open up a space in my class for that??? It's a good study, but we need a few dozen more to really explore the issue.
A lot of people who use instant messaging don't talk in chatspeak — they use normal English spelling and grammar rules, so it follows that their syntax isn't affected.
Ah, but that is where you are quite wrong, since even within the lol-family of iChars, there are subtle differences between the amount and force of laughter implied by the lol-family member being used.
A simple "l" is a short chuckle.
Adding the exclamation point, "l!", gives the chuckle a short punctuality, more like a chortle.
Capitalizing it adds volume, so that "L!" is a loud chortle.
"lol" is a soft laugh. "lol!" is a short, soft laugh. "LOL!" is a short, loud laugh.
Moving up in the lol-family, we have "rofl", then "lmao", and "rotflmao", to which the same rules with "!" and capitalization apply. Further gradiations within the lol-family exist within small groups.
-Jellisky
MSN, IRC, Yahoo! and others all lead to reduced IQs and a sure road to hell.
lol bolox
Interesting. In the dialects that I've been exposed to, 'lol' is used as a mild positive response to any statement. Additionally, it is used as a puntuation mark to indicate the end of a (semi) coherent thought has ended. In which the 'lol' takes the place of the fullstop or any preceeding puctionation (such as exclamation or question marks) if they exist.
E.g.
"yo.. me and mary r goin to the movies.. u gonna brign your gf 2?? lol"
"nah shes meeting me @ my place lol"
"lol sweet"
See sig...
Then != than you morons.
as anyone who has ears knows, it is rap/pop culture that ruins our grammar. Prime example is all the morons out there who say "where you at?" so much, that it turns in to a marketing campaign aimed directly at the morons who think it is correct to talk like that. If you want to blame AIM/instant messaging/email for anything, you might be able to get away with saying it creates bad typing habbits. But for me, personally, it taught me how to type.
d00d that's effin' awesome
Or be funny. I find that works. :)
While the average teenager may not see the need for grammar, no medium (AIM, phone or telegram) can affect language to the point where it becomes unusable. Something unusable, by definition, will stop being used.
While we may not like the fact we can't understand them, it is beside the point. They are not talking to us anyway.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
The article is pretty vague, but after a brief read-through I can't find any evidence that the investigation was designed to prove what the summary says it proves. This bit:
U of T linguists Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis studied over 70 Toronto teenagers and compared their use of language both in speech and while using instant messaging.
makes it sound as though the researchers just took a bunch of teens who already IMed and compared their speech patterns off- and online. I guess it's interesting that the speech they observed was surprisingly complex, but that in no way proves that IM has no detrimental effects on grammar skills: who knows how great those kids' grammar might have been had they never chatted at all?
What we really need is a study comparing IM-using teen with non-IM-using teens (normalized for intelligence, socioeconomics, etc., of course), preferably involving enough subjects to yield results of actual significance. Call me when that article comes out, and then I'll consider relaxing the household IM ban.
It may be true that people don't lose grammar skills as a result of talking online. However, people who are embroiled in AOL speak start believing it's okay to use lax grammar in situations where it's not okay. My friend, who has a great sense of grammar, has trouble understanding why proper grammar sometimes conveys a necessary air of intelligence, the argument being that "they still understand what I'm talking about, don't they?" My major grievance against AOL speak is that it's all part of a culture of taking shortcuts where, often times, none are necessary.
Isn't Hebrew now undead? Or does El-Al really refer to their planes as "big silver birds that fly fast"?
Frosty piss posts are worthless, GNAA posts are worthless and hurtful, but they are the least of this site's neuroses.
http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslat or.html
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Here I thought /. was above such lowly programs as AIM.
"perfer the standard to the offbeat"
Read E.B.White's well-written explanation of when its appropriate. You writing sample implies that little book will serve you well.
What about posting on slashdot, but?
(OK, OK, I know - that's not bad grammar, its merely dialect - bad grammar is down the hall)
Squirrel!
And yes, children really don't have to formally learn (in a school environment / from a textbook / memorising rules) grammar, they pick it up from context while listening to others.
You seem to be saying that you need some type of formal language training to be successful in higher education, which might very well be true; but that's not really related to what the parent poster said.
Might have been funnier if "off" was actually a preposition.
Actually, lol might become a sort of punctuation mark itself: http://typophile.com/node/16343 (This one gets it across nicely.)
hei katter
Nonsense. "lol", especially in sans-serif typefaces, is a bird's-eye view of a stick figure zombie. It has nothing to do with laughing.
Unfetter your ideas. Copyfree your mind.
Nonsense. "lol", especially in sans-serif typefaces, is a bird's-eye view of a stick figure zombie. It has nothing to do with laughing.
\o/
hei katter
... what we have is high school students who can type 60+ WPM and already understand how to communicate in a non-verbal environment.
They know that inflection doesn't come across in an email (or IM) and can write accordingly.
I would also argue that there are plenty of adults (who grew up without IM) who cannot write a proper sentence and still don't understand what a comma is for. They don't know when to use their or there or they're and think that typing in ALL CAPS is acceptable.
-David
What's that -- the top half of a stick figure zombie doing jumping jacks?
Unfetter your ideas. Copyfree your mind.
or is it just Slashdot?
fooby12 writes "According to the Univeristy of Toronto
'Preciate it, Y'all.
The GameServer Sneeze is appropriate here:
ggthx
to which I always reply: "Look, if you're that lazy, either say nothing, or make an alias and buy some vowels from Vannah. She's still a score, even at her age."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If Robert Heinlein could have dreamed of Lewis Caroll, the result would have said it best:
/. won't hurt your grammar or your pappy.
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the momeraths outgrabe in a Non-Euclidean universe where three perfectly parallel lines intersect at ninety degree angles to form a perfect square with seven triangular sides.
Come hither, dearest little mod-points. I promise that
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You are missing the boat here. It is accepted fact that people don't SPEAK with perfect grammar. But that does not mean people should not be held to some standard of written expression. God forbid one person write down his ideas on a piece of paper and 100 years later someone else picks it up, reads it, and understands what the author intended. There is no way this could happen unless we did write in a formal manner. Following the rules of grammar displays the ability to organize your thoughts into proper sentences and paragraphs to be shared with others.
I am also a horrid typist (long story). That said I've seen a really sharp decline in the writing ability of kids over the last 5 years. My niece for example is now starting school at a JC in her area and can barely form a coherent sentence. My mother forwarded some of her emails to me to get my opinion on her writing and how she could have graduated high school. I was quite literally shocked. She spends all day IM'ing and text messaging her little heart out.
Writing is a lot like math. The more you do it the better you are at it. When the vast majority of kids do nothing but IM shorthand all day long their ability to communicate will be hindered. We don't need a study to tell us this. It's common sense.
Ask all the people who type all day long how their handwriting is. Same basic premise at work. If you don't use it you lose it.
Counterpoint: "Effect of Mutually Exclusive Grammar"
There are in fact some very intelligent discussions online. However, I think I have observed that discussions take place at either a high level, or a low level, but rarely mix. Seven correctly spelled words stand out when mingled with hacked grammar, and a NetSpeaker gets modded down on serious forums.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What the parent poster says is proven wrong by the fact that you cannot write as you speak at any level beyond maybe middle school and be taken seriously. We are expected to beable to take our thoughts and fully develop them on written paper. Written language with the use of grammar is concise (when done correctly). On the other hand, spoken langauge is sloppy and is more or less meant to get the job done. By these facts alone, it is inconceivable to actually think for a moment that people can learn proper grammar through speaking. If anything, the spoken word only pollutes the purpose of writing coherently.
1500 posts are worth more than an OEM life. Give me the self esteem injection of a +1 mod anyday.
Wait. That's too abstruse of a lexigraphic choice for a story which investigates whether messaging deprecates grammar, but not Kelsey Grammer.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I remember when I used to use AIM shorthand... What got me to stop using it was that one day in class I happened to forget how to spell the word "you" on a paper I was writing and kept trying to put 'u'. So even though it may not mess with a person's grammar, I would certainly say it's detrimental to spelling.
Semper Fi
Why make a hard boundary between "me" and "I"? Sometimes having to reshuffle a sentence to change a "me" to an "I" just isn't worth the clumsiness.
I doubt it.
I am finding my own once perfect capability to distinguish "there", "their" and "they're" degrading over time when reading all the poorly written crap on the net.
Its a simply case of retraining. As I am reading more sentences that uses these words incorrectly, the ones where they are used correctly stand out less, and the rules dilute. It seems common sensical that this process would be encouraged in IM as anywhere.
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If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
Just have a read around some boards, and if you can tell me that stuff like for example "would of" / "could of" / "should of" is correct English grammar, think a bit more about it. And that's just one of the aberrations out there. There are plenty of native English speakers who butcher their own language's grammar to something that doesn't even make any sense. I don't know of any language which uses a preposition for a verb's tense.
And it's not just that some pundits like making arbitrary rules. (Well, ok, at least in the case of German someone must have loved rules. But even there they're not arbitrary.) Much as we all love a "the Man keeping you down" bullshit theory, that's not really what grammar is for.
It's that at some point you have to communicate with more people than whatever village or l33t clan you're in. If everyone butchers the language in his own way, then effectively you have to reverse engineer each such improvised dialect to understand each other. I know I've had to deal with people in MMOs that almost gave me a headache just trying to understand WTF they were saying. _That_ is the point of trying to have a common language, with the same words and rules for everyone, instead of letting any community, clique and gang split into their own dialect that. Everyone's time is better spent doing more productive stuff than trying to decrypt the personal dialect of every teenager who thinks he's hip and cool if he butchers the language in his own personal dialect.
It's not just that languages evolve. It's that if left to their own devices, languages tend to diverge a lot over time, as each village and region comes up with its own "evolution". There are for example German dialects which could barely communicate with each other if each one only knew his own dialect. And then there are languages which have split from a common root, but are as far from each other as, say, Swedish and German. It was ok to let them diverge like that in times when most people only had to deal with the other villagers in the same village, but that's no longer the case. At some point to function as a modern nation you need a _common_ language, that any two citizens can use and easily understand each other. Hence formalizing a lexicon and a set of rules of that common language.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Linguistics today focus on description, not prescription. So a native speaker will, really, by definition "speak with perfect grammar". Just not all the time.
According to the Univeristy of Toronto ... posting on Slashdot does harm the spelling of posters
I am the maverick of Slashdot
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With gaim, I know when I'm spelling something wrong. Sometimes, I'll copy an email or other text into gaim just to check the spelling. I think I've actually forced myself to learn the correct way to spell several words.
As my typing speed increased I didn't need to use shortcuts.
An + Other = Another
Another - A = Nother ?
Therefore:
"A whole nother"?
And the apostrophe on top of it?
[Choke, gag]
(Hint: try "a whole other".)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
A square, by definition, has four and only four sides. I am aware that a shape with three parallel lines intersecting at 90-degree angles could exist in some non-Euclidean space, but if it had seven sides it would not be a square.
I imagine that IMing with an alternative grammar is no worse than dealing with more than one language on a daily basis. There are many places in the world where people grow up with fluency in more than one language, and they handle each one expertly. In fact, it's been suggested that knowing multiple languages may enhance one's other cognitive abilities. That fact that IM language is a derivative of their native language is probably not hurting the people using it. It may be helping them.
ZOMGROTFLMAOSPLOSION!!!!!111!!1!!111ONE11!!!111 you are SO wrong!!! The more exclamation marks, the better.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
I think you missed the post idea.
The fragment was originally included as mathematical nonsense in a SF story to describe another universe. I welded it to Lewis Carroll's classic literary nonsense to achieve... compound nonsense, all as an elliptic comment on the original story.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You should never have to reshuffle a sentence to avoid the use of the word "me". That's part of the problem. We are all taught at a young age that it's "John and I went to the store" rather than "John and me went to the store." That's fine, but unfortunately, we're not told why, so we just avoid the whole "John and me" construction, regardless of whether or not it is correct. Example:
"The rock fell on John and me."
This is a perfectly grammatically correct sentence, but because of incorrect teaching when young, people will try to avoid the "John and me", changing the sentence to either:
"John and I were hit by the rock," which uses passive voice instead of active, and makes for a phrase with less impact, or:
"The rock fell on John and myself," which is completely incorrect.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I always liked this one:
"Hey Billy. Come and help your uncle Jack off the horse."
I've talked with my Canadians friends but never IM'd them before. Do they IM as s l o w a s t h e y s p e a k?
Bart: So, what you in here for?
Remiedial Child #1: I'm from Canada and everyone thinks I'm slow, eh.
Remiedial Child #2: I fell off the jungle gym and when I woke up I was in here.
Remiedial Child #3: I start fires!
I think that quality instruction in writing (which would include higher standards for being allowed to teach), setting high writing standards in school, and parents setting high expectations for academic effort and performance could easily counteract any bad habits students may develop due to text messaging. The decline of writing skills is the fault of our failing, unaccountable academic system, not the internet or text messaging on cell phones. Do you think private schools would be able to stay in business if they had the poor quality of instruction that many of our public schools do?
I think there's more driving the elevation of a prestige dialect than some commentators on faux news. Cultures tend to exert a comprehensive set of expectations upon their members, and that includes expectations about how to talk and speak. We can argue the morality of society versus the individual, but it seems to me that there's a huge advantage to helping speakers converge on (admittedly arbitrary) prestige dialect. It helps the language stay more homogeneous over both time and space, thereby letting a larger group of people communicate with each other.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you say, per se... just pointing out that the prescriptivist approach--though maybe snobbish--isn't necessarily a bad thing.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Ahem, might have been funnier if "off" WERE actually a preposition.