I came across a 2008 study conducted by the American Life Project studying the impact of digital writing on the quality and frequency of teenager’s writing. The study researched the connection between online and offline writing and whether the online writing that teens do helps or hinders their offline writing.

Overall, the study showed that teens do not believe that online writing helps or is related to offline writing. In at least half of the cases online writing actually decreased the writing ability of the teenager. There was one exception; teens who blogged regularly typically had better offline writing skills.

You can view the study here.

I actually think this study is very interesting. Since it is harder to construct full sentences with texting and other online use, the shortened phrases and acronyms will almost inevitably trickle into every day writing. There are even books published recently that are written in chat speak or even twitter feeds (I am almost positive I heard about a twitter book, but I can’t find anything about it now).

At any rate, my question is, is there really anything wrong with changing the writing style of the world? After all, the current style is nothing like it was 100 or 200 years ago. Does writing have to be long and formal to get a message to readers?

Tags: technology, Tuesday, w

This entry was posted by Brenda on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 3:18 AM and is filed under Technical Issues, Tuesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.