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.""

Comments

NO WAI!

[RobertB-DC]

My first thought, of course, was:

  {o,o}
  |)__)
  -"-"-
O RLY?

{o.o}
|)_(|
-"-"-
YA RLY

  {o,o}
  (__(|
  -"-"-
NO WAI!

(Courtesy of the usual suspects)

Re:NO WAI!

[Simonetta]

I've never done text message communications, so I don't know. But do people actually communicate this way?
    It seems to be all capital letters to facilitate text entry on a device that is held in hand while entering the characters by pushbutton. There there is the phonetic spelling of middle-class mid-Atlantic Americans. The words precisely follow the speech patterns of a casual conversation among young people (15-20 yrs old). There are agreed-upon abbreviations of ironic figures of speech such as OMG (oh my God!?) LOL (Lots Of Luck? Lick Off Loser? Look Or Leap?), WTF (a copulation obsenity used for general accentuation of the opinion that the writer has on the subject). There is the interesting transposition of character for the number three to visually approximate the capital letter 'E'. This seems oddly out of place in a communication format based on direct representation of spoken audio. Perhaps an affection of the author or a sign that the author is a member of a sub-clique that spends much time in a primarily-text oriented environment. Also interesting is the use of numeric characters to represent conjuctions, such as the use of '2' for 'to' but not 'two'.
    So is a new standard usage for the handheld text messaging medium? Do these trends extend to other languages and cultures that use this medium?
    There's a master's degree awaiting for the person who is willing to do the first serious study of this new instant dialect of English. Go for it.

Re:NO WAI!

[Brickwall]

"What I have belived"

" In a pervese variation"

"It's not that the average product of the US public education system's"

"Fortunately we have the Internet with places like slashdot, where everybody's bad grammar and spelling can shine"

Quite.

Instant msg-ing messes with grammar? As if! lol!

[Neoncow]

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

that is gd

[TheOldSchooler]

i wuz wurried that im'n 2 much wuz m/king me 4get gd gremmer.

Canadian teens?

[PoitNarf]

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...

Not True

[mcguiver]

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.

Fun with Punctuation

[Aabra]

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

I agree....

[MattS423]

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.

Re:Telegraph didn't hurt anybody's grammar

[null_session]

Good point (stop)

Not correct to assume message content affected by path (stop)

Silly people (stop)

Re:To the Contrary!

[Distinguished Hero]

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.

I'm pretty sure that "it has led me to getting" is grammatically incorrect. You might want to try "it has led to me getting" instead; while it involves splitting an infinitive, a practice frowned upon by some, I believe it to be far more correct than your version.

Some people may actually improve based on the widespread use of IMs, just like emails or passing notes in class...

Furthermore, "just like emails or passing notes in class" is not a complete clause, so I don't believe your other sentence to be grammatically correct either. I intend no offense; however, you attaining a near perfect sore on your "SAT exam" may say more about the aptitude of the SAT to measure your proficiency with the English language than it does about your own aptitude.

P.S. English is my third language. If I have made any grammatical mistakes in my post, feel free to correct them; however, if you do happen to come across such mistakes, please keep my ameliorating circumstance in mind.

Re: "Net doesn't corrupt grammar??!"

[TaoPhoenix]

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

Re:ROFLMAO.

[zero1101]

"Doesn't get the joke" is being modded up as Insightful now??

I don't understand how the parent managed to make a confident proclamation about the attribution of the quotation, then completely failed to get the point of the quotation itself. Oh right...Slashdot.

Re:Instant msg-ing messes with grammar? As if! lol

[apotheon]

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.

Is IM bad for spelling?

[Furmy]

or is it just Slashdot?
fooby12 writes "According to the Univeristy of Toronto

Re:Word Processor Autocorrect

[sfe_software]

While I don't dispute your experience, I have to say that word processors (or IM clients) that flag suspect words has actually improved my spelling. I see the mispelled words so often that I start making a mental note of the ones I screw up the most, one at a time.

I agree with you on this. I also replied to the parent post, but there is a huge difference between when the software shows you the mistake, perhaps suggesting an alternative, and when it simply "fixes" it. For example, open Microsoft Word and type "teh". The word will magically become "the", with no feedback or warning.

When a word or phrase is underlined, flagging that you did something wrong, then you have to actually look at it, right-click it, and let the software correct it. This can, in fact, improve your spelling and/or grammar, because you have to acknowledge that you did something wrong. On that I fully agree with you.

It's the fully automatic corrections that bother me. If you get used to typing "teh" for "the", and "cna" for "can", etc, you might find yourself in a situation (say, at a job using different software) where these auto-corrections aren't available, and you might simply overlook the mistake.

Hell, for the longest time, when I was doing tech-support for a web hosting company, I frequently found myself typing the following phrase:

We appologize for the inconvenience

I focused so much on making sure to spell inconvenience correctly (I before E and so on) that I didn't realize I was misspelling appologize... lol :)

More Fun - Capitalization

[mopslik]

I always liked this one:

"Hey Billy. Come and help your uncle Jack off the horse."