Does Texting Affect Writing By Michaela Cullington

In Michaela Cullington’s essay titled, “Does Texting Affect Writing?” the author tests the ongoing question of how today’s youth handles the effects of texting in the education system. Using successful evidence from both sides of the argument as well as participating in her own experiment, Cullington is able to fully demonstrate how texting does not interfere with today’s students and their abilities to write formally in the classroom.

“Our generation doesn't ring the doorbell. They text or call to say they're outside,” this line is from one of the well-known social networks, Tweeter, which shows how the way of communication has change in this modern life. According to 2013 statistics by Business Insider, in United States alone, smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average — 67 texts on a daily basis — and receive another 1,831 texts (Cocotas). Nowadays, technology such as text messaging has practically replaced traditional face to face communication among the society primarily in young generations because texting allows messages to be sent fast and effortless. In order to quickly type what they are trying to say in text messaging, people are

Does Texting Affect Writing: A Critical Analysis of the Influence of Text Speak in Student’s Writing

Texting has fast become the preferred form of communication for young adults; however, students need to be dissuaded from texting during class because of the result in loss of valuable class time, lack of effective communication skills, and consistent use of improper English leading to a negative impact on students’ learning.

After reading Texting and Writing, by Michaela Cullington, I do not agree with many of her viewpoints. Cullington argues that texting does not affect a students writing. Textspeak, the abbreviation and shortening of words like used when writing a text message, does affect the way a student writes because they use the abbreviations, and their writings tend to lack punctuation. When a writer uses excessive abbreviations on a regular basis they can get stuck in the writer’s head causing them to use them in all of their writings. Cullington did make good points of her own opinion on texting and writing in her piece, but I disagree with her and believe that texting and

Throughout “Does Texting Affect Writing?” words such as textspeak, communication, writing, writing abilities, students and teenagers are

Katie Hafner’s article, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll,” displays that the rising number of texts sent by adolescents day in and day out is starting to take a big toll on them, their lifestyle, and the people around them. To start off, in the first part of the article Hafner expresses that the point of the first section is that with a growing number of young people utilizing texting and using it nonstop texting is causing serious issues such as anxiety, failing grades, distraction in school, sleep issues and many others. The author exclaims in the section that, “The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.”

In today’s society one would not be able to communicate effectively with the world if writing was not involved. People all around the world send emails, texts, and letter to numerous amounts of individuals each second. Talking on the phone is slowly becoming a thing of the past while the writing side of technology is taking over. The meaning of writing is changing in society. Writing used to be specifically for academics or the occasional letter to a loved one. As time has passed writing has taken more forms and more meanings. In the world we live in now writing is classified as texting, emailing, instant messaging, and even comments or tweets on social media. Although writing has these multiple new forms, it still holds its academic side strongly. Everything with meaning in turn affects a person’s day to day life. Writing has the effect of making one more intellectual. Writing has become a bridge between communication and the cultures and people of today’s society. It gives way for different options in stating sentences or phrases. (Olson). Each affect should change with age. As a person grows older, their writing styles should mature and take on a more professional aspect.

In the reading “Does Texting Affect Writing,?” the author, Michaela Cullington, defines text-messaging as a very popular way in which teenagers and business uses to communicate without the necessity of speaking in a more convenient and rapid way by writing short messages in their mobile devices. However, Cullington states that in order to communicate in a rapid way by text-messaging many people change words to abbreviations. “The language created by these abbreviations is called textspeak” (361). Owning to her well-developed research, Cullington discover that some people consider that the using of abbreviations in text-messaging is affecting the writing skills of students while other believes that is the contrary, that text-messaging helps

In recent discussion of, “Does Texting Affects Writing” by Michaela Cullington, one view is that texting has a negative impact on teens and their writing. Cullington shows both sides of what students, teachers, and professors have to say about the issue of texting; yet after research this belief may not prove to be true. Then she writes about personal experience regarding the issue.

In the essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Michaela Cullington tries to find out if texting really affects the writing skills of students. Cullington conducts her research by interviewing her own past teachers and by using other people’s research on the subject. Logic is used in Cullington’s essay many times to try to persuade her readers to agree with her research results. Cullington does not believe that texting effect students writing because they know when to use textspeak and when not to use textspeak. One example of logic that Cullington uses is the results of surveys she conducted with seven high school and college students. Another example of logic that Cullington uses is the interviews with her high school teachers.

Since the technological phenomenon towards the end of the 20th century, text messaging has been widely used by cellphone users, specifically teenagers, in order to get their conversations across easier and quicker in a very convenient way. In the modern technology world, people have become so accustomed to the idea of

Text messaging in the twenty first century is a norm for people of all ages. This is a means of communication that has grown from talking to friends, to businesses using texting for quick communication. Something that came in the years of texting evolution is textspeak. An argument that can be brought about by many teacher’s and professors is if texting and textspeak can affect a student formal writing. This argument can be both agreed and disagreed with. Studies have been done all over the country proving and disproving whether texting really does affect formal writing. In this paper I want to discuss the most common error that is textspeak related found in formal writings, discuss in what ways texting can affect writing skills, and how some individuals find texting to be beneficial.

First of all, I want to say that I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. McWhorter. Many people say that texting is a “scourge” and shows a decline in literacy in the youth. On the contrary, McWhorter states “Texting isn’t writing at all.” When referring to The Decline and Fall of

Technology is quickly becoming a huge part of day to day life for nearly everyone. If you walk around most places, you will see a large percent of people either on their cell phones, on their computers, or using some other electronic device. While some of it is being used for business and other important things, most of the time, it is more for entertainment. It is because of this that people claim that technology is changing the way people think today. In his article “Is Google making us stupid”, Nicholas Carr argues that people have become dependent upon the internet for information rather than having to work to figure it out. In the article “Does texting effect writing”, Michaela Cullington argues that people’s texting is effecting the way people write because people don’t show emotion when texting, so that is translating back into their writing. Both arguments are effective, both appeal to emotion, but the more effective argument is Carr’s because it is a more sound argument based on logic and credibility.