Do you r8 txt speak? (From Penarth Times)

Do you r8 txt speak?

4:37pm Tuesday 26th January 2010

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When you write text messages, or send a message on Facebook or Twitter, do you use “text speak” or do you use “proper English?”

I fall into the latter category; I am one of those who also use punctuation, capital letters and other bizarre concepts when indulging in a bit of multi-media messaging and social interaction.

When you put it like that it sound vaguely illegal.

I ask the above question because a new study by Dr Clare Wood and colleagues at Coventry University says that children who regularly use text abbreviation may be better at spelling and reading.

Now I am not a highly qualified academic sort, as you may know, but I can’t get my head around why that could even begin to be true. How could that be possible?

If you spend all your leisure time talking to your “m8s abt sumfin wots cwl”, at what stage does that enable you to whip out a quick paragraph or two of prose using the Queen’s English. It’s not going to happen.

In my job I get e-mails and CVs from youngsters trying to get into radio and by and large the standard of writing in them is awful.

This can only be a by-product of quick and easy message writing for texts, MSN and the like.

I know that language is an ever-changing thing and that’s good, but I’m afraid that I am going to have to declare that, in my opinion, the good Doctor must have got her research mixed up with someone else’s here.

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