Age of Texting

In the newspaper the Guardian there is an article titled I h8 txt msgs: How texting is ruining our language where a professor at the University of Wales, David Crystal, gives his views on texting and how it affects our language. He also points out the points of view from others as well as give examples to earlier times where people were always quick to be fearful and judgmental whenever a new language related ‘phenomenon’ was introduced to the world. Later he begins to point out his own view and how texting also helps our language’s evolution. Crystal starts off his argument by describing how even with inventions dating back to printing brings most people to a conclusion that it will have a negative consequence on the English language. He explains how people see it as some foreign language and how it’s restricted to the young only. The first bit of evidence he brings up is how even though it is indeed true most texters are breaking grammatical rules, they still understand that it’s not just throwing shortened words down, it still needs to make sense. He goes to say how the abbreviation of words is nothing new like the use of IOU all the way back in 1618 and how English has had abbreviations ever since writing had been invented. Various examples continuously are given to show how abbreviations and the shortenings of words are nothing new to the English language, and it makes me think why exactly do people see the grammar used in texting as such a harmful thing to our language? It definitely can’t be because of the abbreviations, because some words we use today are abbreviations that were used so much, that they’ve become words themselves like exam or fridge. In 2007 T-Mobile held a contest looking for the best romantic poem using SMS to celebrate World Poetry day. The rules were that it had to be 160 characters or less, and the winner was someone who used no abbreviations what-so-ever while the runner up did. To me that shows that abbreviations doesn’t