A R TI C L E I N F O
A B ST R A C T
Art i c l e h i st ory :
Received: 12 December 2012;
Received in revised form:
2 February 2013;
Accepted: 5 February 2013;
The growing concern about the profuse use of texting endangering the standard forms in
language prompted the present research to determine the presence or absence of SMS
features in the academic writing of the participants. Triangulation was used for data
collection i.e. questionnaires for learners and educators and samples of the learners English
written work were examined for SMS features. Suppliance in Obligatory Context was used
for data recording. Simple average and ratio were used for descriptive analysis of the data.
Contrary to the expectation, there were no significant evidences of these features in the
sample. It seems being proficient in standard forms, these learners are context conscious and
can switch to the appropriate register or style when writing formally .Thus the present study
has de mystified the popular belief about texting adversely affecting writing and thus
destroying Standard English. Moreover, the evidences of one punctuation mark used in place
of another indicate there can be other factors like carelessness or lack of knowledge of
students and the lack of training, feedback or emphasis by educators or the system. So the
matter of concern should be the general neglect of punctuation even out of the context of
texting.
K ey w or d s
Standard English,
Sociolinguistic,
Orthography,
Discursive practices,
Communicative Competence,
Phonetic Transcriptions.
Introduction
With the ever increasing use of text messaging among
students, especially teenagers, there has been a growing concern
among educators, parents, researchers and general public that
this practice is damaging the use of language in speaking and
writing and will affect the standard forms in the long run. The
focus of this study is to find out if there is an impact of SMS on
the formal writing of university students as most of our exams,
assignments, reports and assessments are based on written work
of students, and if it exists, how strong this impact is on the
spelling and punctuation the students use in such writing. This
study has also tried to investigate whether SMS is to be blamed
for poor spelling and punctuation habits of learners or there is a
possibility of the involvement of other factors.
The following research questions were developed in line
with the objectives of the study:
1. Is there any impact of SMS language on the spelling and
punctuation habits of undergraduate students in formal writing?
2. Is the habit of frequent texting only to be blamed if there are
evidences of features of SMS language in students writing?
Literature Review
SMS language is a term for the abbreviations and rebus-like
slang most commonly used due to the essential pithiness of
mobile phone text messaging etiquette.
Context helps when interpreting SMS Language. The
objective of SMS language is to use the least number of
characters needed to convey an intelligible message as many
telecommunication companies have an SMS character limit,
allowing about 160 characters.
Tele:
E-mail addresses: shazia.aziz@ciitlahore.edu.pk
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Features
LEXICAL- No. of words written
No. of words affected by SMS language
Punctuation- No. of full stops obligatory
No. of full stops missed
No. of full stops overused/misused
No. of commas obligatory
No. of commas missed
No. of commas overused/misused
No. of apostrophes obligatory
No. of apostrophes missed
No. of apostrophes overused/misused
No. of question marks obligatory
No. of question marks missed
No. of question marks overused/misused
No. of quotation marks obligatory
No. of quotation marks missed
No. of quotation marks overused/misused
No. of semi colons obligatory
No. of semi colons missed
No. of semi colons overused/misused
No. of capital letters obligatory
No. of capital letters missed
No. of capital letters overused/misused
No. of commas used in place of full stops
No. of full stops used in place of comma
Total
7092
2
440
16
7
206
111
30
27
1
13
2
0
0
3
2
0
1
1
0
390
3
5
8
2
Table 2: Ratio of Patterns of Occurrence of Features of SMS Language/Texting to Obligatory contexts in percentage
Sr. No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Features
Lexical- No. of words written
No. of words affected by SMS language
Punctuation- No. of full stops obligatory
No. of full stops missed
No. of full stops overused/misused
No. of commas obligatory
No. of commas missed
No. of commas overused/misused
No. of apostrophes obligatory
No. of apostrophes missed
No. of apostrophes overused/misused
No. of question marks obligatory
No. of question marks missed
No. of question marks overused/misused
No. of quotation marks obligatory
No. of quotation marks missed
No. of quotation marks overused/misused
No. of semi colons obligatory
No. of semi colons missed
No. of semi colons overused/misused
No. of capital letters obligatory
No. of capital letters missed
No. of capital letters overused/misused
No. of commas used in place of full stops
No. of full stops used in place of comma
Total
7092
2
440
16
7
206
111
30
27
1
13
2
0
0
3
2
0
1
1
0
390
3
5
8
2
Ratio in Percentage
0.03%
3.64%
53.88%
3.70%
0%
66.67%
100%
0.77%
-
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