Most of us have those days – those days when you fear for the future of humankind. If you are a defender of proper grammar and spelling, and if those days seem to be coming fairly often, you are not alone. Journalists and teachers the world over agree with you: technology is destroying the English language.
Communication technology breeds different usage of the existing language; some even claim that “texting and ‘netspeak’ are effectively different languages” (Humphrys). Included in this new language are major groups of lexical shortenings such as acronyms, abbreviations, and contractions (Quan-Haase). It is these shortenings, in addition to use of sentence fragments, that concern people.