Have we become spelling idiots from all the Internet chatting and texting?

Actually I think my spelling has gotten better. My typing definately has. I couldn't type at all prior to getting online and now I do pretty well at it. What is bad is that I have always had beautiful penmenship and I've noticed that it isn't as nice now. AT PEACE WITHIN

I have always been a relatively bad speller since I have to do it mainly from memory because phonics or anything like that never worked for me because of a speech problem I had as a child. But a bigger problem for me is that I get my mind gets ahead of my typing and I leave out letters or words. Another problem from the same reason is transposing letters. Most of the time I will catch these "typing errors" almost immediately and change them. Even though it takes a lot of time if I am unsure about the spelling of a word, I will look it up in the dictionary even for doing a posting here.

To a point, yes. You will note that even Microsoft has given legality to spellings like ‘coz’ and ‘thru’. Oxford and Cambridge Dictionaries, in their updated editions, add new words with spellings every year. So in a way, we are all facing this onslaught from all quarters. There is no way you can escape except if you yourself take care not to indulge in it. (a confession: even I like writing ‘coz’ & ‘thru’, but otherwise I am very particular about my spellings).

yes i do..lol... ever since that's one of my big problem....honestly, everytime im on mylot i always open micreosoft word... it really hepls a lot for me.... even my sisters and friends know me as spelling disaster...hahahaha ^_^

I agree with you. I think eversince Internet chatting and sms texting started people have gotten used to shortcuts. Specially the young ones, you'll even hear them using text languages when their speeking eg... Wer u?, M Hir...

Hmmm.. "spelling idiots" maybe not; at least not for those of us who used correct grammar, tense, conjunctions, punctuation, spelling etc. Although we may be a little out of touch with our former spelling glory, with a little practice, it's not too hard to pick back up. I try every day to write something by hand, even if it is somewhat nonsensical, just to make sure that my hands don't search for the keyboard next time I'm presented with a blank piece of paper and a pen. For the younger generations of internet users, the future of the English language as we almost know it is looking a little grim. Many people don't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're', or certainly don't think it needs attention. When kids are using online abbreviations during in-school written work, it's pretty worrying, as long as we can use our "modified" language in context, we can just be 'having a break'. =D

I think its just letting the lazy people become even more lazy. I've received email from people before and thought they were slobs and then meeting them in person and found out they were very accomplished. It makes my skin crawl to see horrible writing whether it be online or somewhere else. A few mistakes here and there online are to be expected but when you can not spell or capitalize at all you're just lazy.

I don't think texting and chatting can totally change your spelling habits. I myself am texting and chatting all the time. I guess it depends on the person. I also make mistakes such as what you cited but in the end I get to distinguish both forms of writing.

I agree with your points of discussion. That is why we need a forum board like myLot. Where 'self-learning' take place. Totally different compare to verbal communications as it goes for vowel. On texts it need spelling proficiency for expressions. And its all about words and phrases arrangement.

That is why we need a forum board like myLot where 'sel-learning' will take place. Educate us about words and phrase arrangement. Different to verbal communication s. On texts we realized our level of proficiency.

I think that a lot of times we are so much in a rush that we don't really pay attention what we are typing especially if you are a fast typer. I know at times I don't bother with spell check or to look over it when I'm online because with all the abbreviations, shortcuts, and different languages spoken between people on line, I don't think it's really all that important or unacceptable if your grammar is off.

I always try to avoid misspellings and I don't use chatroom abbreviations when posting online, so I've never accidentally used them in real life. I probably have plenty of grammatical errors in my posts, though, since my spellchecker doesn't catch those.

LOL A friend of mine and I were just discussing this the other day. Yeah, typing online can really screw up a person's spelling and grammar simply for the fact that we usually are typing a lot of rapid short messages at once and we don't usually spend time to proofread our work before having to send it. Internet chat rooms ware the worst for cultivating this since you have little or no time to respond to something before it gets spammed out and lost by other people in the room.

ha ha... just stop the word rape. within a few years or so, nobody would be able to differentiate your to you're and other onomatopoeic words, but hey! we'll never know whether they'll be able to create their own language of some sort after a couple of thousand years!

I'm still very good on spelling. I was excellent in my English skills growing up. But like you, when I started online a lot, I noticed a change in my English habits. I'd have run on sentences galore! I was appalled, and now I'm much more conscious of checking for that.

I've never been a great speller, but I do try to use correct grammer and punctuation. Once, I was online went an instant message popped up for my child from one of his friends. I began to answer the friend that my son was busy with homework. While doing this my children came into the room and couldn't believe that I had capitalized the friend name. I heard "Mom, he'll know that's not me. You're using periods and capital letters!"

Hah! I was just talking to my boyfriend about this phenomenon the other night. I had to write a formal letter to our city's health department and I was struggling with it. I realized how bad I had become at formal English because of the internet and instant messaging. I had to dig through the closet to get my Hodges Harbrace Handbook on grammar from college just to complete the letter. I felt really bad about it. I'm trying to correct the problem by using proper punctuation and less slang. But now my friends keep asking me if it's really me online when I speak with them. Pretty embarassing really. --Mira Masque

I am a middle school teacher and let me tell you about texting affecting student's work. I actually have had studnets hand-in assignments with ur in them or u. The worst part is when I circle it as a grammar error they don't understand why. The world of academics is clashing with the online and text message world.

Yes that is kind of sad that people can't speak (or write) English properly.