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.""

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Word Processor Autocorrect

[Trashhalo]

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.

Maybe it's just me

[Red Flayer]

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.

Re:Bad terminology

[kfg]

I've never seen any of those parts of the English language being butchered by netspeak.

Because it arrived prebutchered.

S'ok, if you think it's bad now, you should have seen what was happening to it in the 1500s.

KFG

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NO, it's NOT!

[SanityInAnarchy]

BAD headline! BAD!

NOT AIM! [jabber.org]

Instant Messaging doesn't hurt grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

also in the news

[91degrees]

telegram abbrvs not responsible for poor victorian grammar STOP shorthand essential part of communication STOP language shaped by effeciency STOP.

Re:Hand Writing has suffered

[guaigean]

Cursive isn't really a necessity, just another preference of some people. The idea that cursive is more or less elegant is simply a passing fad. As for hand-writing versus typing, of course typing is much faster. It's sensible to do so, and is reasonable to type rather than write in many cases. The only reason people get in a tizzy over things like this is that they believe their language should be "pure". In reality, the only pure languages are dead languages. Any evolving language is subject to large tranformations, and just because the previous generation of linguists or literature majors doesn't agree with something doesn't mean it is wrong. After all, english is quite a different language today than it once was. Who's to say it will even be recognizable in years to come as such?

Decline of Language

[weasello]

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.

Telegraph didn't hurt anybody's grammar

[Retired Replicant]

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.

Re:Telegraph didn't hurt anybody's grammar

[evanbd]

To be fair, there's a difference in quantity that could reasonably be expected to be relevant...

Also, most kids these days spend a fair bit of time on IM / SMS / etc, whereas kids almost never sent telegraphs. It is plausible that using bad grammar and syntax would hurt more when you're young and still learning.

I don't think telegraphs are a particularly relevant comparison.

Kids These Days

[8ball629]

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 ;).

I think it helps

[edmicman]

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.

Re:Is grammar taught anymore...

[kfg]

. . .bussed to special schools to learn nothing.

Bingo! We have a winner.

KFG

Re:western union telegrams

[Drachemorder]

Hmm, perhaps, but when telegrams charged people on a per-character basis, they had a legitimate financial interest in abbreviating things. AIM slang is, in my opinion, nothing more than pure sloth.

Oddly Enough

[NixLuver]

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*.

Re:NO WAI!

[waveclaw]

I never thought the grammar and spelling quality of the 'average' person was declining due to AIM'ng, SMS, etc. What I have belived is that the smart people are already on the 'net. In a pervese variation of Metcalf's Law, each new person that gets on is much more likely to be an idiot that detracts from the 'net than benefit it. With nearly every US teenager on, everybody gets to see what mass produced education has done to your mass produced USA 'citizen.' It's not that the average product of the US public education system's skills declined, they just always sucked. Nobody knew it because those poor at writing either hid it well or stayed away from situations that required it.

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

(And when I starting talking in l33t3, just do what a guy I knew does: go to the mall. Being around all the Valley-speak tends to normalize the speech centers somewhat.)

Re:ROFLMAO.

[Wordsmith]

I've always considered that an absurd example of the absurdity of avoiding ending sentences with prepositions.

Churchill (or whomever) could have easily said, "I will not put up with the practive of ending a sentence with a preposition."

Alternately, he could have kept his basic sentence structure and used a verb, instead of a prepositional phrase that acted as one. "The ending of a sentence with a preposition is a practice I will not tolerate."

Re:You don't seem to have much of a sense of humor

[Anonymous Coward]

Or be funny. I find that works. :)