Have you ever sat in a room where every single person is staring at their phone screen, preoccupied by the world of technology? The room is silent. This silence is not on purpose but is rather a result of the lack of face-to-face communication. Everyone in the room is too fixated on what is displayed on their phone screen. Rather than simply looking up and carrying on a conversation with those present, they’re texting someone who is not present. What is the point of them being together, when they don’t even speak to each other? This sounds silly and impractical, but this situation happens all the time.
With the recent technology that allows us to send messages to others several miles away in a matter of seconds, we obviously use this to our advantage. While this way of communication, called texting, has the benefits of instantaneously communicating with others and can be more practical than a phone call or face-to-face conversation, it takes away from building communication skills and the preferred slang writing style can affect our communication.
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Text messaging is fast, easy, convenient, and an easy way to multitask. Texting has, in several ways, has made communication easier. People use text messaging to receive dates, tell people they love them or goodnight, avoid oral communication, coordinate times to meet up, and maintain connection with long distance friends and family. A mass text is a text message that is sent to more than one person at once. Text messaging could simply be used to plan and coordinate with friends for that night or the future. Messages could even be sent while brushing your teeth, singing a song, eating food, playing a game, or at work. One convenience of text messaging is it doesn’t need to be responded to immediately. The message can be answered whenever it’s convenient, like email. Texting encourages rapid-fire, single-sentence thoughts, but this style of communication shouldn’t be conducive to face-to-face communication.
Talking on the phone used to be the means of communication for most people, but over the last 20 years texting or instant messaging has developed into one of the most common ways of staying in touch with friends and family. Let’s face it, with the rise in recent technology we seem to be rapidly losing the art of face-to-face communication. How many times have you seen people out eating dinner and everyone is on their phone? No one is talking to each other. Whether they are surfing social media or texting, they are simply not talking. Don’t misunderstand, I am not anti-texting, but I do believe there is a time and a place. Texting is great for quick short messages and meaningless joking. I, for one, am guilty of texting to arrange to meet up with people and finalizing plans. There are, however, situations where texting is not an acceptable means of communication. It is very difficult to have a deep meaningful conversation through text messaging. This first and most important reason is that the text can be misinterpreted. Through text the tone of voice cannot be heard. Therefore, it can be uncertain whether they’re annoyed, happy or sad, which can result in confusion. Eye contact and body language are very important facets of face-to face communication, which cannot be seen through text messaging. It’s well known that good communication is essential to relationships, so why replace talking with texting?
SMS language or texting language is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in mobile phone texts, or other Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging. Features of early mobile phone messaging encouraged users to us abbreviations. Text entry was difficult, requiring multiple key presses on a small keypad to generate each letter, and messages were generally limited to a specific amount of characters. Therefore, text language made it easier and quicker to compose text messages. Once its popularity rose, it was often used outside of texting, such as to write emails or letters. As our messages keep getting shorter, so do the words, neglecting grammar and spelling in the process. Some studies have found a negative correlation between frequency of use of text language and measures of spelling, grammar, and other measuring abilities related literacy. Grammar errors can lead to miscommunication such as comma placement can change the meaning of a sentence.
Society is evolving with each generation to come. Cell phones are no longer large, square blocks and televisions are no longer in black and white, writing itself has also evolved. Once upon a time many wrote and spoke in Shakespearean form of language and over the years it has evolved into something, we call modern English. In recent years, technology has advanced greatly, and cell phones have become one of our primary means of communication. With cell phones came a new form of writing called text messaging. Often text messages involve the use of abbreviations which stand for different things and involves frequent use of emojis as a form of expression. This form of writing is considered informal writing and is not acceptable in academic settings. Knowing the difference between text language and formal writing and the appropriate setting to use them is key in effectively communication.
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