Texting and Writing: A Comparative Analysis of Reich and Cullington's Articles

Running head: TEXTING AND WRITING
TEXTING AND WRITING
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1TEXTING AND WRITING
The rapid advancement of information and communication technology has led a huge
proportion of the world population, especially the teenagers, to spend long hours on texting
and chatting. The language used in such conversations vary significantly from the established
standards of English. Opinions vary about the positive and negative impacts of texting on the
academic writing and performance of the students. This paper aims to perform a comparative
analysis of two such articles – Turn Teen Texting Towards Better Writing by Justin Reich and
Does Texting Affect Writing? by Michaela Cullington.
The first article by Reich is heavily dependent upon personal experiences and
opinions coupled with a few strong and reliable secondary resources like ‘Pew Internet &
American Life Project and the College Board’, while Cullington’s study is dependent upon a
vast array of secondary resource articles which brings to light the existing literature on the
concerned topic, followed by a survey conducted across a wide cross-section of teachers and
students.
Both agree to the fact that the language of texting is informal and involves vehement
use of abbreviations, thereby departing from the codes of standard written language. Through
research and personal experiences, both have found that students unanimously agree to this
difference and believe that in academia, a formal writing approach is essential for educational
growth and should not include text messaging techniques like the use of abbreviations within
their corpus.
However, unlike Reich, Cullington presents a more detailed account of the binaries in
the perceptions and opinions of teachers as well as researchers regarding the how text
language, commonly called ‘textspeak’ influences the written language of students, especially
teenagers, in their academic realms (CULLINGTON). One portion of the literature presents
the opinions of many teachers who believe that students have a growing habit of using
acronyms and abbreviations in their writing, along with wrong usage of punctuation marks,