Calgary Journal Online

Abbreviations run rampant all over the World Wide Web, and are now making their way into people’s everyday conversation.

Abbreviating is completely harmless, when used in a proper setting. But I worry that with people talking over the Internet and text messaging with increasing frequency, some people are starting to have trouble deciding when it’s appropriate to abbreviate, and when it’s not.

For example, a few months ago, a friend of mine emailed me a section of a book that she was writing. She asked if I could read it over and give her my thoughts.

When I got about halfway through, I noticed something strange in a portion of dialogue between her characters.

One of her characters said “btw,” which, for those familiar with common Internet abbreviations, means “by the way.” I wondered if this was accidental, or if my friend had used it intentionally as some kind of character quirk.

When I asked about it, my friend was just as surprised as I was to find the abbreviation. She explained that she had been working on her book while also talking to her friends on her instant messenger. As a result, she put a common abbreviation that she used in online conversation into her other writing, completely by mistake.

I’m not the only one who has seen the effect technology has on people’s writing. Heide Doppmeier teaches English for grades 10 through 12 at Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School and said she has seen first-hand the dependency her students have on technology.

She said that since students started becoming reliant on computers for word processing, their handwriting skills have “deteriorated beyond belief.” She said that almost half of her students have illegible handwriting and poor spelling skills.

“They get them on those computers way too young,” Doppmeier said. “Before they can even write and spell, they’re on the computer.”

When I was in elementary school, I was only allowed access to school computers during my designated class time, which was about one hour per week. During those classes, my computer content was limited mostly to typing exercises.

However, it seems that teachers’ beliefs regarding computers has changed over the years.

According to a 2004 Statistics Canada study by H. Ertl and J. Plante, there is a now a widespread belief that the educational use of computers and the Internet enhances students’ learning.

The study concluded that during the 2003-2004 school year, 90 per cent of computers in Canadian schools were connected to the Internet and available to students.

Things have certainly changed. When I was growing up, not only was my access to computers limited in school, but my assignments and tests had to be handwritten using complete sentences.

I didn’t realize at the time that my teachers were trying to teach me basic writing skills, rather than trying to simply annoy me. I was constantly being tested and corrected on grammar, spelling and punctuation because my teachers thought that these things were vital parts of education.

Doppmeier has been teaching for 28 years, and said not only has she seen students’ skills decrease in quality, but she has also seen a growing reluctance on the part of teachers to correct mistakes.

She said that children can now go many years without having their spelling and grammar checked or corrected. She said that in her experience, teachers of other subjects often do not feel it is their responsibility to correct these things.

“We’re all teachers of language,” Doppmeier said. “It’s not just up to the English teachers.”

While I would have been scolded for not answering questions in complete sentences, Doppmeier said that she also frequently has to deal with students using abbreviations, especially during short answer exam questions. She said she believes that frequency of texting and online communication plays a role in this.

“Every kid (abbreviates) to a point,” she said. “But I’m seeing more and more of it all the time.”

The frequency of online communication and texting appears to be affecting post-secondary students as well.

In my first year of university, I was required to take an English class as a prerequisite. On the first day, my classmates and I were given a writing assignment so our teacher could see how well we grasped basic things like spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

I assumed that everyone in my class had adequate knowledge of these things, so I was taken completely by surprise when my professor spent the first three weeks of class giving us grammar and punctuation exercises. He said that he felt that our comprehension of these concepts was not at the level it should be, and that we would all benefit from a crash course.

I had taken a year off from school prior to starting university, and I was shocked at how fast my skills had deteriorated. For the most part, the only writing I had done in the previous 12 months was in the form of online commenting and conversations on instant messenger, where nobody cares about things like punctuation and grammar.

Rod Corbett, faculty development consultant for learning technologies at Mount Royal University, said he has had experience with Internet communication styles “creeping in” to his students’ formal writing reports.

Corbett said he has his students write journal entries in addition to their formal writing assignments.

“It’s important for them to learn how to communicate both formally and conversationally,” he said.

He said that he can see, especially in the journals, that students are used to communicating online. Corbett does not grade the journals, but he said he also comes across Internet writing in his students’ formal reports.

“It is annoying when I see things like the lower-case ‘I’…or the abbreviation for ‘you,’” he said.  “I don’t correct it in the journals, but if it’s in a formal report, it counts as an error.”

In addition to these types of errors, Corbett said that a bigger issue is his students’ dependency on electronic spellcheckers.

In one of Corbett’s classes, students are required to create an ePortfolio on a website that does not have spellcheck built in. Corbett said he often hears complaints from students because they are so used to having the tool available.

“They’re frustrated because they don’t have that crutch,” he said.

It seems to me that while technology is advancing, people’s basic language skills are deteriorating. Everybody makes mistakes, and of course it’s helpful to have an electronic device that can pick up the ones that we don’t catch, but having a dependence on these things can be troublesome.

I think it’s easier to learn the basic skills and then develop them further through technology, instead of trying to learn both the language and technology skills together.

As useful as technology is, with a dependency on things like spellcheck, text messaging and online conversation, one of the most basic and useful skills people can develop – writing – is falling by the wayside.