T_freeman's List: Misinformation Debate (Tommy Freeman)

• Emoticons, truncated and butchered words such as 'cuz,' are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser.
• "Little happy faces ... or a sad face ... little abbreviations," show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani. "Instead of 'because', it's 'cuz'. That's one I see fairly frequently," she says, and these are new in the past five years.
• "The words 'a lot' have become one word, for everyone, as far as I can tell. 'Definitely' is always spelled with an 'a' - 'definately'. I don't know why," says Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser.
• "Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none."
• "I get their essays and I go 'You obviously don't know what a sentence fragment is. You think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words'," said Budra.
• Cellphone texting and social networking on Internet sites are degrading writing skills, say even experts in the field.

• "I think it has," says Joel Postman, author of "SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate," who has taught Fortune 500 companies how to use social networking.

   

  The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an e-mail to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.
• "It would say to me ... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.

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• Journalists and teachers the world over agree with you: technology is destroying the English language.
• Communication technology breeds different usage of the existing language; some even claim that “texting and ‘netspeak’ are effectively different languages” (Humphrys).  Included in this new language are major groups of lexical shortenings such as acronyms, abbreviations, and contractions (Quan-Haase).  It is these shortenings, in addition to use of sentence fragments, that concern people.  
• Reportedly, “netspeak” is showing up in schoolwork and other formal writing.  Middle- and high-school teachers (and students) report usage of “u” for “you,” “2” for “to” (or “too,” or “two”), and other decipherable but bothersome mistakes: “shortened words, improper capitalization and punctuation, and characters like &, $, and @” (Lee). 
• “’My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2 go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-@ kds FTF. ILNY, its gr8.’” (Ward). 
• Teachers blame technology.  What’s more, so do the students; one sixteen-year-old said that “her ability to separate formal and informal English declined the more she used instant messages” (Lee).  It seems that today’s children are failing to learn the same language rules that are so familiar to those of us who diagrammed countless sentences with straightedges
• Complaints about the new language of swift communication are not limited to concerns about clear and understandable communication.  Many fear the destruction of language’s charm and diversity.
• “the… vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago.  They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary.  And they must be stopped.”
• “The efficiency of AOL-speak,” he claims, “not only erodes relationships by dumbing down how people talk to one another but it also degrades the English language itself.”  His full prediction of doomsday can be found here. 
• Understandably, adults and grammar-conscious teens are worried.  When, thanks to constant online activity, one has seen there/their/they’re misused so many times that even correct usages start to look mistaken – well, then something must be wrong.  The technology that spreads such errors is the obvious and easy target.

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• New technology that includes word processing, instant messaging, emailing, text messaging, and online chatting are contributing to a shift in traditional writing conventions and style. Many claim that these new technologically driven forms of writing are eroding the English language and the perceived proper written use of the English language.
• inevitably going to lose the ability to write with correct style and conventions.
• “Today I want to talk about the all-out assault on the English language and the role technology plays in that unprovoked and dastardly attack. I especially want to talk about the ways dumbing down the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged as the status quo” (Long, 2006).
• However, this argument is an old one. “Similar debates undoubtedly took place when we moved from quills to pens, from pens to typewriters, and from typewriters to word-processors. They will no doubt continue as we move from keyboards to voice-recognition systems” (Hartly, Howe & McKeachie, 2001).  In fact “the same objections commonly urged today against computers were urged by Plato in the Phaedrus (247-7) and in the Seventh Letter against writing” (Ong, 2002).
• it is inevitable that language will adapt to fit the constraints of time and societal priorities that are being placed on it, but the shift as of now is not as drastic as some imagine it to be.
• As we forge ahead with new technology writing will continue to evolve and adapt to the needs of those that communicate with it and along with this change will come new methods and systems for communication that will enable our continued communication of language through technology.

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• I think that the technology has raced ahead of the literacy about how to use it. And the educational institutions have lagged behind in teaching people how to use it.
• It would be a shame, Rheingold says, if user Twitter tools, such as hashtags and re-tweets were replaced in a company effort to grow.
• "The web is all about peer learning and peer discussion," Rheingold says.
• If the goal is for young people to make good choices; Rheingold thinks this is not taught by taking away social media in the schools through online filtering.
• online communities require structured and purposeful collaboration.
• "Facebook has kind of degraded that art of forum conversation because Facebook conversation groups don't really index the conversation threads well," he said.

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• Texting does not always follow the standard rules of English grammar, nor usual word spellings. Texting has become so widely used and persuasive that it is almost regarded as a new language register.
• Generations are now typing, texting and tweeting their own unique language. This word abbreviated Morse Code like grammar sweeps from computer to phone on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
• For a number of years teachers and parents have blamed texting for two ills: the corruption of language and the degradation in spelling of youth writing.

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