Infographic: Techspeak Ruining Kids' Grammar | Does Texting Hurt Your Grammar?

Yikes! According to a study summarized graphically by OnlineCollege.org:

[T]he more students text, the more it may impact their grammar.

The infographic tries to answer these questions:

Does texting hurt your grammar? How does this happen and why does it matter?

This PC Magazine article explains that two Northwestern University researchers surveyed 228 sixth, seventh and eighth grade middle-school students along the U.S. East Coast and tested their association between text-message usage and the kids' scores on a grammar assessment. 

The study said:

Adolescents are active participants when engaging with text messaging technologies and perceive them to be useful and convenient. It is in this nearly constant engagement with the technology that adolescents encounter the grammatical adaptations of techspeak. ...

Although the freedom to use adaptations of language in text messages may make an adolescent perceive it to be a more useful medium for communication, results of this study show clearly that these adaptations are negatively related to an adolescent's grasp of standard English grammar.

Uh, speaking of techspeak, the report writers are sure into academicspeak. Still, their findings are worth considering ... and acting on. But how?

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The PC Magazine article is featured today, April 23, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Style: Write Choices, available at the Editorial Style tab above and by free email subscription.