Professor David Crystal Case

Professor David Crystal at the University of Wales opposes the traditional belief that texting damages our language ability. After briefly describing the fast development of text messages, David Crystal points out some factors which prove that texting has not ruined our writing skills. Besides, he also demonstrates a study of Coventry University which shows that texting actually improves children's literacy. In my opinion, I agree that texting doesn't weaken student's writing ability, but spending time texting too much doesn't actually make us become better writers, it even has negative effects on academic performance.

David Crystal argues that even if abbreviations were somehow damaging to our writing skills, the effect is becoming negligible over time, since the percentage of abbreviations in text messages is decreasing. According to him, all texters need to be understood after all. Therefore, they will not overuse abbreviation and shorten form so that other people can't understand them. In my experience, whenever I text to my mother, I just use standard grammar, or she'll ask me to state more clearly. Besides, my mom always uses standard orthography. Older and more consecutive texters like my mother make the percentage of standard word and grammar even higher. Additionally, David crystal also states that when an institution sends a message to public, it also makes sure that the message is clear, abbreviation-free so that every people can understand easily and instantly. Finally, as a college student, I usually chat with my friend through Facebook, and I realize that with the help of smart phone, typing text with abbreviation doesn't save very much time compare to typing with standard grammar. Therefore, the percentage of messages contains abbreviation is more and more decreased, text messages only have a very small negative impact on our writing ability.

David Crystal also believes all the uses of single leters, numerals, symbols, initial letter, and abbreviations of text messages aren't something very new at all, they were used in the past and they didn't hurt our writing. The first element is the "use of single letters, numerals, and symbols to represent words or parts of words" (Crystal 338). The common instance is "2 b" for "to be". David Crystal believes that this form of using words is already used in the past when people solved puzzles in Christmas:

YY U R YY U B I C U R YY 4 ME

("Too wise you are...") (Crystal 338)

The second element is the use of initial letters which is also not very new at all. David gives an example about "modern kid's "lol" and earlier generation's "Swalk"", there are no difference between them"" (David Crystal 338-339). The third element is abbreviation. According