Michaela Cullington's Article: Does Texting Affects Writing Skills

One of my quirkiest traits―and a consistent topic of laughter amongst my friends―is my ever-present and never-fading habit of texting with perfect grammar. Semicolons, commas, and colons all make an appearance in my texting, a side effect of wanting to be a book editor when I grow up. Some might argue that because I use texting as a form of communication, my writing skills have regressed. Others argue that texting has actually benefitted my formal writing skills. In Michaela Cullington’s article, “Does Texting Affect Writing?”, she responds to both sides of this popular argument, as well as conducts her own research to form her opinion. Through analysis of both the positive and negatives of texting and its effect on writing skills, I concluded …show more content…
In order to do this, she questioned seven of her students asking a series of questions: how long they had been texting, how often they texted, what type of abbreviations they used most and how often they used them, and whether they noticed themselves using any type of textspeak in their formal writing. In order to get another viewpoint, she interviewed two high school teachers as well, but she asked them slightly different questions: had they noticed their students using textspeak in their writing assignments, and, if so, how they dealt with it. She also asked if they believed texting had a positive or negative effect on writing, if they texted too, and if they knew what should be done to prevent teens from using textspeak. Her answers from the students were so vastly different from those of the teachers that she decided to take a sample of twenty college students’ writing to see if textspeak was found. She concluded through their answers, as well as the writing samples, that texting had a minimal to no effect on a student's writing; students do in fact know not to use textspeak in formal writing assignments, and this was proven when no textspeak was found in the student