Figure 15 Text-messaging (http://www.mrpaulmaul.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/text-messaging-advertising.jpg)
Most of people in the world use the digital technology in their daily lives by using cell phones, computers for data processing, information collecting, communication and playing games. In the last thirty years due to the technological advances, mobile phone becomes major of the communication because mobile is more convenient than the computer. It is the information age, a world with fast and easy access to information, growing up with the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms, laptops, computers, and phones capable of multiple medium formats. Since the development of text messaging expands to the world, specifically for North America and Europe, more and more young people even middle-age people use mobile phone to send messages to their friends. It is an easier way to communicate than the callings which need a quiet place.
There is one main style for typing in the cell phone-Short Message Service (SMS). SMS is a text message service make up mobile, web and phone, a kind of standardization that exchange messages between any kinds of phones. For the common, SMS is usually used in mobile-to-mobile text messages, but now it will transform to other broadcast text messaging and other wider areas.
SMS was used by Neil Papworth, he sent first message to cell phone for Merry Christmas.[1]. But now it becomes the common technology for all of countries because everyone uses that every day. SMS is an unbelievable process in the world. It has 4 billion GSM (Global System for Mobile) customers in the middle of 2009, and every user has generally more than 50 messages per month which created 100 billion dollar to become almost the largest turnover industry in the world.[2] The UK has averaged over 4 billion messages a month with an annual total of about 45 billion messages.[3] Originally, SMS was designed as part of GSM, but is now available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks. However, not all text messaging systems use SMS, and some implementations of the opinion which can be chosen to catch attention.
Is texting bringing us closer to the end of life as we currently tolerate it? Some people say no and some people will say yes, and I agree for the second opinion. Texting or messaging can affect language negatively because texting use contractions and symbols to intervene academic language, because texting will transform people into the ancient language if overusing and because texting can make some neologisms so that expand to other people in messages.
Contractions:
If people want to send their messages quickly, the first point that they should be mentioned is the speed of typing. So they cannot use any academic words, only simple words which can easily express what they want to say can appear in messages. However, some people also think even though the simple words also decrease their speeds. Therefore, symbols and contractions are discovered in messages. There is a variety of contraction and their definitions. (See figure2)
(Figure 16)
In addition, not only the contractions, but people also use emoticons and initialism in messages such as a smile face “:-)” tilt head to the left, “lol” to be laughing out loud, “g2g” to be got to go and “brb” means be right back. These kinds of abbreviations actually increase much of the speed, and almost half people who really like send messages already remember all of the abbreviations. Negatively, the texting which is a simple language affect the academic language in newspaper. For example, Kathy English, the author of “Does correct spelling matter to journalists” in Toronto Star, mentions that there are some readers always point out some little wrong mistaken words appeared in the newspaper which make some audience get confused. “To sometimes hilarious effect (not affect!), the Star has confused stationary and stationery, fazed and phased, principal and principle, aide and aid, pored and poured”[4]. Because of editors in newspaper always focus on texting more than the academic language so that it should be a problem.
Overuse:
Overuse means pay more attention and it will affect language to be negative. People pay more attention to the texting and texting only include the simple language; so people use more simple language or speaking language than the academic language which is the same as the ancient time. Because there are no rules for writing at that time, people just know how to speak but they do not know how to write. Before the SMS, people already have the perfect language systems and the idea that people want to come back to the ancient time is terrible. It will decrease the value of languages. There is a video shows one professor’s opinion about the text messaging and the effect on language. (See figure3)
(Figure 17-YouTube-Effects of Text Messaging on Language)(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY67Pjbi-QI)
Neologisms:
Neologism means new words. It is common that people will invent some new words which have the organized meaning of some words or some phrases in messages. At the beginning, one person invents one new word and then sends to his some friends. After the explanation, they all know the word and undeniably his friends will use that word to his friends which makes a geometric growth in human society. Furthermore, there is not just one person invents new words and not just one word that he or she will invent. So long time after, there are many new words appeared in messages for common. For example, Charles Foran, the author in Walrus Magazine, points out that “‘spod’ is an irritating amateur techie; ‘Netsploitation’ involves taking advantage of the Net’s freedom to push a product; ‘Fram’ is a spam from friends and ‘to gonk’ is to embellish the truth.”[5] At the beginning that people first see the words, it is pretty sure that no one can recognize these words. Nevertheless, if people always type the new words which they invent in messages, it will fresh their memory. When they need to write same thing in the academic exercise, these new words will be wrong because these are not admitted in the academic writing so that professor or teacher might be confused about that. It is hard to change the type style by overusing new words so many times. And maybe they will forget how to write the real meaning of the new words.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, students are losing critical thinking skills because they pay more attention to text messaging instead of academic writing. Texting or messaging can affect language negatively to make people forget how to spell words even though some simple words, to harm formal language transform to informal language and to add new words from typing messages to academic writing which is incorrect. Sending messages too much can make people even students cannot focus more on knowledge what teachers will teach. Although there are no any points that only have positive and negative. Consequently, texting or messaging affect more badly than good way.
Word Count: 1,349
[1] Victoria Shannon, “15 years of text messages, a ‘cultural phenomenon’” The New York Times, December 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/technology/05iht-sms.4.8603150.html?pagewanted=all, accessed March 18 2012.
[2] Friedhelm Hillebrand, Finn Trosby, Kevin Holley, and Ian Hrris. Short Message Service (SMS): The Creation of Personal Global Text Messaging (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), xiii
[3] David Crystal, “Text Messages: Texting,” ELT, Vol. 62, (1 January 2008): 77.
[4] Kathy English, “Does correct spelling matter to journalists?” The Toronto Star, 10 February 2012, Al.
[5] Charles Foran. “MSN Spoken Here.” Walrus, February 2004, http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2004.02-language-lingo-message-text/, accessed 4 March 2012.
Language 
Your introduction should attempt to connect your broad topic ( language) to your narrowed topic. Yours starts of immediately with your narrowed topic: the relationship and impact between texting or messaging and language. You do define a technical term (SMS) in your introduction which is appropriate. Your introduction does have an appropriate general to specific structure; however, your thesis statement is not clear. I believe that this is mainly due to grammatical errors. Overall, your grammatical errors, which are numerous, detract from the effectiveness of your writing and, thus, your argument. Your argument is also not correct. You state that texting/messaging is interfering with academic language. People do not communicate in academic language they communicate in spoken or written language. Your argument in the “Overuse” section is not properly developed; hence, it is confusing. Your concluding sentence brings in a new point: critical thinking skills. You have not argued a loss of critical thinking skills in the body of your essay.
In the “Contractions” section you argue that contractions and abbreviations used when texting affects the language in newspapers, but you do not adequately support this argument with evidence. The example you give about errors in the Toronto Star is about spelling errors based on homonyms. We do not know that these mistakes are caused by texting. You did not develop your argument. You also do not define the technical term ‘inirialism.’ Your section on “Neologisms” is the best argued.
You footnote format is accurate and you have paraphrased information. You do not refer to your contraction image correctly. You have it labeled as Figure 16, but in-text you refer to it as Figure 2. You have the same problem when you refer to the YouTube video.