The popular media buzzes with assertions about how text-messaging abbreviations (c u soon!), initialisms (g2g), and simplifications (he sed) are bringing about the ruin of young people’s spelling. In contrast, linguists such as David Crystal (2008) suggest that better literacy skills may allow more creative text-style writing. However, little empirical research seems to have been conducted to address this debate. In the present study, 55 undergraduate students were asked to compose and to read aloud text messages on a mobile phone, in conventional English and in “text-message style” writing, or “textese”. Students used textese readily when asked to do so, producing an average of 21 textisms per 45-word message. Results showed that writing in textese saves time for the writer: students were significantly faster at composing messages in textese (mean = 220 s) than in conventional English (258 s). However, messages written in textese proved difficult to read: students took nearly twice as long to read aloud such messages (mean = 26 s) as messages written in conventional English (14 s), and made significantly more errors: 2.61 per message vs. 0.27, respectively. Despite predictions, speed and accuracy at reading and writing in textese showed virtually no significant relationships with general reading, spelling, grammatical awareness, or phonological awareness. Thus, textese might save you time to write, and cost you time to read, but at least in this type of test, it doesn’t reflect your literacy skills.

Authors: Nenagh Kemp

Event: SF08: Speed Papers

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