Cyber-Speak

Long gone are the days of the cute little stamp or sticker that says "GOOD JOB" - "GREAT WORK" - "WAY TO GO" - "SUPER", according to a new study cyber-speak is finding it's way into homework papers.

Online Teen-Speak Shows Up in School Papers
Friday, April 25, 2008
AP

NEW YORK — It's nothing to LOL about: Despite best efforts to keep school writing assignments formal, two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Thursday, also found that teens who keep blogs or use social-networking sites like Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace have a greater tendency to slip nonstandard elements into assignments.

Half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or e-mail messages, such as "LOL" for "laughing out loud."

Teens who consider electronic communications with friends as "writing" are more likely to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish the two.

Click here to read article from Fox News.

I admit even being 40 I still use the occaisional "LOL". Pretty soon you will see the teachers using Cyber-speak to grade papers, maybe "WTG" or the "IDK how you came to this conclusion"