Blog Seven

In the essay “A way with word, or away with words: effect of texting IMing on language”, author Timothy Barranco addresses whether or not using abbreviating words to text messages is harmful for the youth’s language skill. He provides several strong evidences to support that texting message has a positive effect on its users. In the second and third paragraph, Barranco points outs that some people argue that txt is having negative effects on English language skill in teenager, so on the rest of his essay, he offers examples, authority to prove these people’s opinions are wrong. First of all, he writes that txt doesn’t dominate the writing of txt users because “the use of short forms, abbreviations, and emotional language is infinitesimally small, less than 3% of the data”(Tagliamonte and Denis 24). Txt users have to know the words, phrases, and sentences that they want to shorten so that they can abbreviate them. Moreover, the author uses his research resources and his personal experience to show that “the bad habits developed through frequent use of txt are typically short-lived.” According to writer’s illustration, when txt users grow old and become mature, they tend to use more formal style in their writing instead of the txt they used. Finally, Barranco mentions that as the consequence of evolving of language, txt is a newest style that has occurred; therefore, people still need time to embrace it. As the author describes in his last paragraph, “TXT should be accepted as a useful tool and given a chance to show its full potential as an accessory to the English language.”