A recent survey showed that two-thirds of today’s teens use “nonstandard elements” in their school writing assignments. 

This is news? OMG.

I’m LOL with my BFF who’s a real QT.

“Half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or e-mail messages, such as “LOL” for “laughing out loud.” A quarter of teens have used :) and other emoticons.”

Can you say “text messaging”? Get a stopwatch, grab a teen, and see who can read the following faster:

Romeo and Juliet - Text Messaging Version

Act 1

Login: Romeo : R u awake? Want 2 chat? 
Juliet: O Rom. Where4 art thou? 
Romeo: Outside yr window. 
Juliet: Stalker! 
Romeo: Had 2 come. feeling jiggy. 
Juliet: B careful. My family h8 u. 
Romeo: Tell me about it. What about u? 
Juliet: ‘m up for marriage f u are.. Is tht a bit fwd? 
Romeo: No. Yes. No. Oh, dsnt mat-r, 2moro @ 9? 
Juliet: Luv U xxxx 
Romeo: CU then xxxx 

Act 2

Friar: Do u? 
Juliet: I do 
Romeo: I do

Act 3

Juliet: Come bck 2 bed. It’s the nightingale not the lark. 
Romeo: OK 
Juliet: !!! I ws wrong !!!. It’s the lark. U gotta go. Or die. 
Romeo: Damn. I shouldn’t hv wasted Tybalt & gt banished. 
Juliet: When CU again? 
Romeo: Soon. Promise. Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu. 
Juliet: Miss u big time.

Act 4

Nurse: Yr mum says u have 2 marry Paris!! 
Juliet: No way. Yuk yuk yuk. n-e-way, am mard 2 Rom. 

Act 5

Friar: Really? O no. U wl have 2 take potion that makes u look ded. 
Juliet: Gr8

Act 6

Romeo: J-why r u not returning my texts? 
Romeo: RUOK? Am abroad but phone still works. 
Romeo: TEXT ME! 
Batty: Bad news. J dead. Sorry l8

Act 7

Romeo: J-wish u wr able 2 read this…am now poisoning & and climbing in yr grave. LUV U Ju xxxx 

Act 8

Juliet: R-got yr text! Am alive! Ws faking it! Whr RU? Oh… 
Friar: Vry bad situation. 
Juliet: Nightmare. LUVU2. Always. Dagger. Ow!!! Logout

by cartoonist Roz Chast, first published in the New Yorker

Honestly, using text language in writing isn’t so much an issue with my students. But, please, oh please,tell me who in the educational food chain abdicated the teaching of CURSIVE? 

They print EVERYTHING. Sometimes using all upper case letters, some using all lower case, and sometimes using an arbitrary combination of the two, but contrary to the standard rules of punctuation. Every year there’s the token bubble letter kid, the one who dots everything with a puffy heart, and one year I had someone use a star as a dot. Every paper sparkled. Then, inevitably, there’s the dreaded ant scrawler. S/he’s the one whose handwriting is so microscopic, the Constitution would take up less than half of a looseleaf page.

A few of them must confuse “margin” with ‘margARinE” because their sentences spread out all over the paper. Early in the year, I have to introduce “Mr. Paragraph” to those who’ve yet to learn the fine art of indenting.

I suppose I digressed. But to bring it back around, the survey about teens using informal language in school was conducted by–wait for it–telephone.

The delicious irony.

TAFN