Literacy and Online Communication

With more and more forms of technology continuing to generate in our society-from the latest Samsung galaxy, the updated versions of the blackberry, or even just the newest IPhones, these handheld gadgets have significantly taken a toll and revolutionized the ways we communicate with one another. From common acronyms like “LOL” or “ttyl,” I am sure that we can all agree texting has changed most of our grammar for the worse. Especially when we are communicating with one another through social media networks, like Twitter, and we are limited to 140 characters per tweet. Hence, this limitation often causes many people to remove grammatical punctuation completely in order to make room for more characters.

Nonetheless, I do not believe that these social media networks are to blame for the mistreated use of grammar in academic or professional writing. I firmly believe that at this point in our lives, by attending university, we should have already mastered the art of separating texting and online community writing from business and professional writing. I mean sure, texting may affect our knowledge of grammar in the sense that when we text our friends or family we use a broader range of vocabulary than in academic writing. However, with auto correct placed in our smartphones it allows us to correct a misspelt word prior to sending our text messages, which is a step in the right direction. I certainly do not believe that university essays will end up littered with emoticons due to the affects texting and online communication has had on our writing. Because as previously stated, it might affect a student’s vocabulary, but I do not believe it will get to the point where a student will feel comfortable with submitting an academic paper that has emoticons