So....while sitting up on my computer at about 2:33 in the morning in my college dorm room (this is about the time I started my English paper on textism and how it has negative affects on children's "literacy development") I started to questions what is formal writing. My argument for the paper was that abbreviations and all these slang words were slowly creeping up into the minds of the young and stealing them away from FORMAL WRITING therefore causing them to do poorly in school. After my long procrastination series and finally busting out an 8 page paper I kind of questioned myself and everything else I just wrote. What is formal writing? Yeah, I guess we all kind of know what is it when we see it...
Since these youngsters are growing up with all these abbreviation who can blame them for not exactly knowing how to handle "slang writing" and formal writing. But why do they have too? We see new advancements when it comes to automated cashiers, accountants, and anything else that a human can do, so why can't we make advancements and improvements that are simply beneficial language and communication. Why are we still teaching new generations formal writing?
Please just stay with me here before you think im some crazy lady who started off taking about writing, jumped into technology and now wants all of our scholarly articles to be writing with "2nite" and "ur"'s in it.
OLD ENGLISH: the language of the Anglo-Saxons (up to about 1150), a highly inflected language with a largely Germanic vocabulary, very different from modern English.
what caused us to make the switch from old English to our modern day vocabulary? (I mean come on have you tried to read a Shakespeare book on your own??). Im sure there was a group of big grumpy men who decided that this vocabulary is outdated and does not represent their generation and the ones to come anymore!! My point is not to start writing everything with abbr. but simply the ones that makes every1s life easier. Writing should be more natural and less punctual. There should b a focus on thoughts rather than spelling, the flow of ideas rather than grammar, and there should be an individual voice behind every boring TIMES NEW ROMAN 12 PT FONT.
Children now r stuck behind the fear of failure and r constantly being spoken 2 with "slang" yet being taught to write differently. Just think about it... imagine having to write papers in old English but you can text the way you do now? Im sure that's how it feels for most of these elementary school students who are just as confused as we r when we r reading Shakespeare.
I think its time to say fuck the people who decided there needs to be a template for the way we write in order for it to be considered academic. If a physisist is able to produce a piece of writing that not only other physicist can read, but ACTUAL people props to them!!! Using large fancy words does not make you a smarter person just means you have access to thesaurus.come just like everyone else.