Does Texting Affecting Writing By Michaela Cullington

In the article Does Texting Affect Writing? Michaela Cullington argued the sides for and against texting affecting writing and gave examples from many sources such as teachers, articles, books, and magazines. In Cullington’s article, she included many literary devices trying to gather the reader’s attention to help support both sides of the argument allowing the reader to understand the two sides of the argument. Cullington starts her paper by opening it up to draw the reader’s attention by asking “Does Texting Affect Writing?” and in fact, that is her title. In her first paragraph, she answers the rhetorical question by giving what texting is, what, and how it is taking over our lives. Cullington goes on to provide more background information about texting and how we use it. Then, she starts to talk about how it is affecting writing such as students using abbreviations also known as textspeak and that she pointed out two opposing points one is that it is hindering the students’ abilities to write, and the other side stated that it has a positive effect on the writing. After, she starts using a supporting material such as a USA Today article summarizing the effects that texting is affecting about only one-fourth of high-school students are writing at a proficient level (2). Cullington used another source, Jacquie Ream, saying “Keep It Short and Simple” (2) to write more efficiently. In another source, it dissents that point telling the younger generations are lacking communication skills due to the shorthand acronyms in texting affecting not just the writing but also spelling. The same source also stated that it had changed emotion in the student's papers due to the use of emojis in texting. Continuing, Cullington gets into more evidence supporting why texting is hindering writing. …show more content…
She states that the decline of proficient writing abilities is caused by the increased popularity of texting and increased use of abbreviations. Cullington uses a couple of teachers more than several times that crack down on the use of acronyms, and some teachers pointed out some examples that are commonly used like 2 instead of to, gr8 for great, dat for that, and wut instead of what (2). In addition to, teachers say they end up spending more time editing papers and having to remind their students that it is not acceptable using both slang and abbreviations in their writing. Another teacher added that her students have become so custom to using acronyms and slang terms that they don’t even notice that they do it. To add more supporting details to texting affecting writing is punctuation. Since students don’t pay too much attention to punctuation in their texts, then ultimately, they don’t in their writing. Cullington continued by giving another teacher’s input by stating students are forgetting to add commas and apostrophes where needed and most importantly capitalizing words at the beginning of sentences. Additionally, Cullington wanted to get a more personal perspective on the topic, so she interviewed two of …show more content…
She also explained in many ways opposing viewpoints on how different sources and teachers viewed texting whether good or bad. Furthermore, she included occurrences where one source said one thing about texting affecting writing but added opposing detail to contradict what they previously stated. Lastly, Cullington mentioned other literary devices to help support her argument such as rhetorical questions, binary oppositions, imagery and so