Donald Clark Plan B: txtng (the gr8 db8) October 6, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , trackbackA review of David Crystal's study of texting: "It’s good to see some sound, academic sense in a field that’s dominated by amateur newspaper hacks like John Humphries (in the Daily Mail), John Sutherland (in the Guardian) and Lynn Truss, who see texting as some sort of illegitimate attack on language. Disgruntled Boomers, who know little or nothing about either texting or liguistics love to crow on about how it’s debasing the language and producing generation of illiterate idiots. A widely distributed newspaper story in 2003 stated that a student had written an entire essay in textspeak. Turns out this was made up and the essay has never been found. […] But the true worth of the book is in tearing down popular misconceptions. Texting, according to Crystal is:
Not new
Not restricted to the young
Doesn’t abbreviate as much as you think it does
Helps rather than hinders literacy
Produces wonderful forms of language"
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