Abnkkpagtxtplako!

THSE hu thnk txtng s bd 4 r cmnktn skls rais yr thmbs. And those who are still wondering what the head and the first sentence are saying either have to go to their eye doctor really bad or were born in the same year as the T-Rex.

Texting has become so much a part of our lives that it has become one of the major ways we stay connected with one another. But there are those who say it’s leaving us with more than thumbs out of joint. Texting, they say, is doing serious damage to our communication skills, and nurturing a generation of bad spellers who have a hard time with face-to-face interaction and suffer from abbreviated thought processes.

At least that’s the theory. In the latest piece for i Report‘s current series on Literature and Literacy, however, editor and poet Ramon Sunico argues that it is just another technological advance that “allows us to affirm those few relationships that inform our lives whenever and wherever we want to. And if we take this sense of presence and belonging, of being part of a loop no matter how small it is, as a basis for communication, then texting — no matter the subject of one’s message — affirms the social nature of our being.”

“Taken against this broad view of communication,” he adds, “the horrible grammar and quirky spellings can be seen not as omens of the death of our communication skills, but as contemporary expressions of the special ‘languages’ small groups use to strengthen themselves.”

Read on at pcij.org.