The Globe Keeps Texting

When it’s not busy making us drowsy, the Globe appears to have named itself steward of the English language. Back in April, the paper editorialized about a study that reveals that kids these days don’t understand standard English because they communicate mainly in text shorthand by writing their opinion in the same pseudo-language. Kind of silly, if you ask us.

Today, the Globe reports that rumors of English’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

OMG.

A recent survey, by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that a quarter of teenagers sprinkled emoticons like the well-worn smiley face into schoolwork, while twice as many flouted capitalization and punctuation rules.

But others are not so quick to write the obituary for coherent language.

A growing body of research shows electronic communications channels like instant messaging have created a kind of semi-speech – language that is between talking and writing. Some say it is evidence of evolution, not of decay.

Srsly, you guys. This is not that big a deal. For generations, people have feared that their spawn would be the ones to kill off the English language.

Back when I was in high school, you still had to explain what ROTFLMAO meant, but grammarians worried that our inability to speak a complete sentence without dropping a “like” every other word meant our generation would ruin America’s ability to, like, communicate. But a decade later, we still continue to understand one another.

However, we completely support reinstating corporal punishment in our schools if kids think it’s a good idea to put smiley faces in their papers. We even knew to keep the “likes” at bay when writing about The Scarlet Letter.