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Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: Voice

I’ll admit, I’m with the rest of the world when I say I don’t know what I would do without text messaging. It’s fast, it’s easy and it sure beats having face to face conversations in most situations.

However, the one detriment the exponential growth of text messaging has had on society in the past five years is its horrific influence on grammar.

Maybe it’s because I’m an English major, or maybe it’s because grammar is one of my pet peeves, but I have little tolerance for incorrect grammar.

Now, I can totally understand using abbreviations, foregoing most punctuation and using “lol” an unhealthy amount of times while text messaging. There’s limited space and no one really wants to spend the time putting in apostrophes and making sure to avoid comma splices.

But when these text-acceptable grammar habits become prominent in more formal means of communication, we have a problem. I can handle most incorrect punctuation in e-mails, but seriously, is it really necessary to abbreviate words like ‘tonight.’ There is one letter difference between the proper spelling and the much-used ‘tonite.’ If you’re really so lazy that you can’t move one more finger for the sake of spelling, you seriously have a problem. Just spell the word out properly. I’m pretty sure not doing so isn’t saving you any perceivable
amount of time, and you’re probably making yourself appear dumber than you really are.

It’s a million times worse, too, when this appalling grammar spreads to formal papers written for class. Maybe use this as a guideline: if you would send a sentence used in a homework assignment verbatim as a text message, you probably shouldn’t use it in a paper you turn in to a professor.

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