Dumbing it down - Is Text Talk Devaluing the English Language? Write House Founder, Daniel Waldron, Investigates

In my general perusing of my Sunday newspaper recently, I came across a very alarming article, which showed a PDF image of a recent GCSE English examination completed by a 16 year old student at a top UK secondary school.

At first I thought nothing of it, expecting the article to be heaping praise on another successful student from one of the UK’s leading academic institutions. Imagine my horror then, when upon closer observation of the said PDF image, I noticed an exam paper littered with ‘text talk’.

The said image had focused in on an essay question requesting the exam participant to provide a detailed analysis of two characters featured in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I was shocked to see phrases like: ‘She really h8D him’ and ‘They cud not av been more in luv <3’.

For those of you unfamiliar with text speak (or txt spk) I will translate the aforementioned. ‘h8D’ should be taken to mean ‘hated’ and the ‘They cud not av been more in luv <3’ should be taken to mean ‘They could not have been more in love’.

I couldn’t believe what was I was seeing. Has the youth of British society succumb so much to social media, smartphones and other such demons that defile the English language that they have lost all appreciation of the English tongue?

Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid user of social media and smartphones etc…But never would I resort to sub-standard English, which, in my opinion and it’s my opinion only, reduces the value of the English language and portrays our youth as a generation completely devoid of any language intellect.

Am I looking at this from the wrong perspective? Is it that the English language I know is becoming obsolete and as a copywriter I am rather sensitive about the subject? Or, should I see the positives and embrace the idea that the next generation has developed a whole new English language that will shape the future of society, not just in Britain, but all over the world.

I almost convinced myself then. Absolutely not, I refuse to accept that ‘text talk’ is the replacement of years of our beautiful language, represented in many different accents across the UK and in many different cultures across the world.

Embracing the idea that my children would not understand me when I tell them ‘I love you’ unless I wrote it ‘ i luv u’ or I <3 u’, I just can’t entertain the notion. Again, for those of you unfamiliar with ‘text talk’ this image <3 is meant to depict a heart shape.

Maybe I’m being too harsh; critics of my opinion would suggest that ‘text talk’ is not dumbed down English. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Those who support ‘text talk’ believe it’s a very inventive form of shorthand, which requires a high level of grammatical intelligence in order to alter letters with numbers to create a ‘word’.

Whilst the article I read is only one instance of such an incident, a number of education experts have said it has become a widespread problem. Whilst the ‘language’ is perfectly eligible to the youth of today, traditionalists struggle to interpret text language.

Having been in copywriting for a number of years, maybe it’s my age and the generation in which I was taught was very particular about the use of English language. Supporters of ‘text talk’ stress that the majority of children passing through the current education system are intelligent enough to decipher between where to use text talk and where not to.

In fact a recent study conducted by Coventry University revealed that the more text speak teenagers used in text messages, the higher they scored in tests of reading and vocabulary.

So maybe I've been proved wrong, perhaps text talk is not dumbing down the next generation, it’s actually enhancing their ability.

Maybe it’s just a sign that I don’t like change… I am certainly a traditionalist ‘I 8 txt spk’ – I was being ironic. I’m going to stick to my copywriting roots, good old fashioned English language, served neat. ‘Viva la resistance’.      

Plagiarism: The Scourge of the Copywriter

As a copywriter nothing is more frustrating than producing a unique, well written article only to discover that it has been copied and pasted and placed on another website under a different author name.

Hours of research and writing are all undone by what can only be described as lazy writers and ‘freelance’ copywriters that take on bulk projects and are unable to hit specified deadlines, therefore resorting to ‘copy theft’ in order to meet the requirements of those they exploit.

A minority of individuals take the profession of ‘copywriter’ quite literally. Simply they copy the work of honest, legitimate writers and pass it off as their own. The problem has become so widespread that websites now exist that monitor the uniqueness of content in order to stamp 

out copy plagiarising.

The World Wide Web is a awash with content and, due to the substantial amount of written content that is uploaded on a daily basis, there is a high percentage chance that content will be copied and re-submitted under another author name.

Some would argue that there is no harm in such a practice, after all much of the news content on the web is often regurgitated and presented in a different way. Whilst this is a true statement, the negative impact that it has on writers that create the original content can be quite costly.

The largest culprit for copied content are freelance sites, whereby certain individuals, describing themselves as copywriters, take on small, medium or massive writing projects advertised by businesses all over the world, yet these so called ‘writers’ have absolutely no writing experience at all.

Such ‘writers’ resort to scouring the internet to trace content worthy of piecing together an article for unsuspecting clients that will meet approval and often that content is plagiarised from the work of other writers.

Whilst the content is ‘well written’, a closer look will reveal that because the content has often been sourced from several different sources, a tactic used to try and hide the fact that content is copied, it often does not flow, make sense or remain on topic.

Therefore, it could be argued that not only does plagiarism devalue the work of the original writer; it means that the recipients of copied content often end up with a disjointed article that is nonsensical, of poor quality and completely substandard for the intention it was purposed for.

Unfortunately, the problem continues to escalate, despite the introduction of websites put in place (e.g. Copyscape) to monitor and penalise those that simply plagiarise another writer’s work.

The continued problem has a derogatory impact on genuine copywriters looking to make an honest living. Trust in the freelance market has also suffered in terms of the quality that freelance service users can expect. However, the use of freelance writers has increased due to economic recession and businesses looking to cut back on costs.

However, although the use of freelancer writers has increased, this has also opened the door for rogue copywriters to exploit unsuspecting customers all in the interests of making quick money.

The key piece of advice that Write House can give is that ‘cheaper is not always the solution’. Common sense should prevail and those seeking the services of a copywriter should do their research, check credentials and references and finally, if you’re serious about using the services of a top copywriter or copywriting service you have to be prepared to pay the going rate.

In this instance, the term ‘you get what you pay for’ could not be more accurate.

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