I commonly find two classes of *possible* creep-over in student writing.
One is only in student emails: absence of capital letters and conversion
of "you" to "u." My students usually discriminate quite well between
"classroom writing" and "email," but not between "casual email" and
"business/formal email." I have had a couple of students who
spectacularly fuzzed the boundaries between informal email and formal
writing (hence my earlier "d00d" reference) but a couple of memorable
examples doesn't make a trend.
The other class of items is one I only suspect is being supported by
text-messaging: homonym errors. I don't think people where I currently
live have pronounced "which" and "witch" differently for generations,
but ten years ago, I think more of them distinguished them in writing.
I'm frequently getting "were" for "where" in student papers. Homonym
errors are, of course, by no means new, but regularly *seeing* text that
routinely uses "were" for both "where" and "were" has to have an effect.
If you read only material that's published (newspapers, novels, etc.)
that type of conflation usually doesn't make it past an editor, so you
get used to seeing the difference in text even if (as with which/witch
for many people) there's no difference in pronunciation. It won't be an
emergency if some of these spelling distinctions disappear entirely --
it's happened before, and many times -- but there it is.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Sullivan, Brian P
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 10:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: text messaging creep-over?
Ironically, there might be more creep-over into professors' comments
than there is into students' papers; some professors use "emoticons" to
soften the occasional comment.
Brian
Brian O'Sullivan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
Director of the Writing Center
St. Mary's College of Maryland
Montgomery Hall 50
18952 E. Fisher Rd.
St. Mary's City, Maryland
20686
240-895-4242
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of R.
Michael Medley (GLS)
Sent: Fri 6/20/2008 10:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: text messaging creep-over?
Washington Post staff writer Linton Weeks seemingly believes everything
he
reads:
"In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging --
seeping into academic writing."
"Text messaging creep-over"? Not a sign of it as far as I can tell. I
just returned from reading more than 700 Advanced Placement English
language and composition essays written by students from across the
nation. I saw plenty of inarticulateness but absolutely no sign
whatsoever of "text messaging creep-over" into academic writing.
Apparently, high school students, even those who score rather low on
their
essays (4.5 is about the average score on a scale of 9), know to keep
features of text messaging register out of their academic writing.
R. Michael Medley, Ph.D.
Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802
[log in to unmask] (540) 432-4051
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