"You are so used to abbreviating things, you just start doing it unconsciously on schoolwork and reports and other things," said Eve Brecker, 15, a student at Montclair High School in New Jersey.
Ms. Brecker once handed in a midterm exam riddled with instant-messaging shorthand. "I had an hour to write an essay on Romeo and Juliet," she said. "I just wanted to finish before my time was up. I was writing fast and carelessly. I spelled `you' `u.' " She got a C.
Even terms that cannot be expressed verbally are making their way into papers. Melanie Weaver was stunned by some of the term papers she received from a 10th-grade class she recently taught as part of an internship. "They would be trying to make a point in a paper, they would put a smiley face in the end," said Ms. Weaver, who teaches at Alvernia College in Reading, Pa. "If they were presenting an argument and they needed to present an opposite view, they would put a frown."... Read and despair. The real issue is carelessness.
Article comments
1 - jshevrin
r u serious??? 4 real??
2 - senoric
in a 6th grade writing assignment i made the mistake of putting the words "go" and "to" together. the paper was returned with GOTO underlined, and graded appropriately. i asked my dad if the teacher was illiterate....he replied with a severe beating! as easy as it may have seemed to cut a project short in the future, i never used GOTO......
3 - Jim S
My wife has noticed this phenomenon (she is an 8th grade Science teacher) in the past, and scolded me for the way I would write e-mails and messages, so I stopped doing that, since it IS actually quite annoying to try to figure out what someone is saying when everything is abbreviated....
4 - Chris Daley
We have come along way. When email was first "taking off" in the 90's I had a heck of a time writing the @ symbol. They didn't teach us that one in school. For a while I just put down a capital O. The times they are a changing.
5 - dont worry bout it
lol this is all kinda funny u kno i can type shorthand like this but i still kno how 2 write in school.. just like the rest of em should nd im in 9th.. i dont waste my time 2 punctuate ot capitilize when sendin emails or IMs or nething like that.. but when im in school or somthin like that i wouldnt even think about nd yea.. sometimes we dont even realize wat were writing just cuz we use it so much... yea.. times r changing.. just gonna have 2 get used 2 it
6 - csdfjg
i sometimes end up riting abreviations on my paper cuz i use it more than i use real riting, but i usually end up catching it, or, if i'm at school, spell check underlines it, so idc.
7 - hahaha
i think teachers should learn 2 read it, so they don't keep on complaining abou it!!! It's faster, and makes it so it doesn't take as much time 2 type, so y not learn it?
8 - Phillip Winn
#7, Because it's ignorant. You're in school to get an education, not spend as little time as possible typing.
What separates the educated from the uneducated? Issues like these. Those who want learn to succeed in life learn how to speak and write the language, while others complain about the waste of time and spend the rest of their lives working at Wal-mart.
That's a slightly hyperbolic simplification, of course.
9 - Luke
Expecting teachers to accept 1337sp33k is the same as expecting them to accept papers written in ebonics.
10 - Christopher Rose
Teachers don't decide what gets taught so it's pointless to argue with them about it.
11 - Maria
First, thank you for this great post. I've used you as a reference for mine and linked to your site.
You probably won't be surprised that I have encountered IM shorcuts in college papers!
Great site. I look forward to reading more.
Maria