• From here to illiteracy: ‘X’ marks our sad spot   

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      BY CHERYL O’DONOVAN  Van Mom Strikes Again      June 4, 2012 12:50PM
• Updated: June 9, 2012 9:22AM

• If technology has advanced us in every way, how can we explain the 10-point drop in SAT literacy scores at high schools in the past 20 years? How can bringing computers into classrooms help students focus and concentrate when a website is all about jumping around and clicking?

   

  Kids can no longer write legibly and cursive writing is becoming obsolete. People crow that it’s keyboard progress. We don’t need to write.

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• LOLWUT? Is text messaging ruining the English language?

    

    

  By Jessie Curtin

   <!--<p class="author"><span class="by">By</span> <a href="/search?q="Jessie Curtin"">Jessie Curtin</a></p>-->  

  Editor-in-Chief

    

   

  Published: Friday, May 13, 2011

   

  Updated: Friday, May 13, 2011 17:05
• Late this past March, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added the initialisms FYI (for your information), OMG (oh my god), LOL (laugh out loud), TMI (too much information) and BFF (best friend forever) to its new online edition, according to LATimes.com.

• Keeping up with society's need to further simplify the language, like the OED, the Associated Press continually makes updates to their AP Style Guide. Recently, the AP announced that electronic mail will no longer be written "e-mail" and will instead be written "email." Only this past year did the AP finally resort to changing "website" from their previous style of two words — "Web site."

   

    Not only did the OED include the common initialisms, but they have also added their first graphic symbol — the heart graphic. Give me a break.

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• On the contrary, the utilization of text messaging language in the classroom is considered by many educators to be an inappropriate form of language that is “infecting” Standard English and leading to lower scores on writing examinations (Carrington, 2005, p. 168).

• Along with formal spellings of words, grammar rules, including capitalization and punctuation, have been forsaken. Shortened expressions lead to ambiguity in writing and, no matter what the skills of the reader, some sentences without proper grammar can be interpreted multiple ways.