Professors Move To Eliminate Chatspeak

Some professors are not too pleased with the way text message abbreviations are infiltrating the classroom.

The Contra Costa Times reports:

Faculty members increasingly have expressed irritation about reading acronyms and abbreviations they often do not understand, said Sally Murphy, a Cal State East Bay professor and director of the university's general-education program. One e-mail to a professor started with, "Yo, teach," she said.

"It has a real effect on the tone of professionalism," said Murphy, who also has seen younger instructors use the shorthand. "We tell them very specifically how this is going to affect them in life. It's kind of like wearing their jeans below their butt. They're going to lose all credibility."

Cal State East Bay instructor Alejo Enriquez has gone so far as to explicitly banned text-message speak from e-mail correspondence in his class syllabus.

A 2008 study of high school and middle school students by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that found a majority of them had used chatspeak and emoticons in class assignments.

Teens generally do not believe that technology negatively influences the quality of their writing, but they do acknowledge that the informal styles of writing that mark the use of these text-based technologies for many teens do occasionally filter into their school work. Overall, nearly two-thirds of teens (64%) say they incorporate some informal styles from their text-based communications into their writing at school.

What do you think? Is this a matter to LOL at?