A global perspective of the "texting gap"

Naomi S. Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, is Professor of Linguistics at American University in Washington, DC., putting our concern about the "texting gap" into a global perspective on OupBlog via Ypulse.

"Viewed from the other side of the Atlantic, text messaging by adolescents in the United States seems reminiscent of the early days of desktop publishing. Once we reveled in experiments with point size, font style, and color. The results were often graphic disasters, as we failed to heed the Delphic warning, "Nothing in Excess." Gradually word processing became a workaday tool, and our documents calmed down.

In Europe, text messaging (generally known as SMS) first appeared in 1993, giving young people a decade more experience with the medium than their American counterparts. What is still often a toy in America, played on with youthful abandon, has settled into a pedestrian appliance elsewhere, particularly as teen mature into young adults."

emily | 11:24 AM | Do you speak SMS? |
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