Michaela Cullington's Article Does Texting Affect Writing?

The daily activity of texting has slowly taken over the lives of this generation. Some say it is a useful tool and some say that it is detrimental. The debate brought upon by the article is whether or not texting translates into daily writing. The author, Michaela Cullington, discusses this question in her article “Does Texting Affect Writing?” In the article, the author portrays what texting is and what has come out of it. She constantly uses words like anywhere, quick, easy, and convenient, which help convey that texting has become a more efficient way of communicating rather than face-to-face contact. She uses the situation of using texting in business and just standing in line to help show the efficiency of texting as well. She also uses …show more content…
Included in Cullington’s paper is an interesting and surprising study of research on whether texting is good or bad for writing. She surveyed and studied students, teachers, and teenagers’ writings. Through the interviews and studies in her article, Cullington comes to the conclusion that it is not known if there is a positive effect or negative effect from texting on writing although there are both positive and negative effects. Cullington says that many people argue that they support the idea that texting results in bad writing habits. Others agree that texting has a positive effect and it allows students to have more practice and grow as writers. Cullington has not stated which side she stands by, but she does provide a great deal of information for both …show more content…
A study performed in 2010 by Latisha Shafie suggest that texting does have a small effect on writing, but it is not as abundant that Cullington’s article suggests. Shafie states multiple times that students can switch back and forth between texting context and English context. This showing that texting does not translate as much into writing as students can decide which style goes in the correct situation. Although students can decide where to use what style there are still some errors that are present in writing that Shafie suggests come from texting. She states many times that there are small errors, but they are not large as if students are using a texting language in writing. These small errors show that texting may only lead to students lacking in spelling and grammar in writing but not completely changing the style. Shafie states that “Yet there are surprisingly a lot of spelling errors both in-class assignments and examination scripts. This finding suggests that the participants are not able to recall the right spellings when the situation arises.” (Shafie, 2008, p. 30). Thus meaning that Cullington showed strong evidence but the study brings around the statement that texting has a small effect on grammar and spelling but not an overall change in style of