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It’s a divisive issue. Or maybe it is just me. Either way, there’s no denying the impact of LOL-speak and texting on communication. The quaint LOL eased its way into our collective conscience and paved the way for the BRBs, TTYLs, TLDRs, and the myriad of other confusing combinations that followed. Whole words reduced to a single letter – or even a number.

We all use them. Most of us use them correctly. Some have embarrassing mishaps. LOL-speak is easy to type and efficient at getting the meaning across, provided you are fluent. Abbreviated text grew out of necessity because of the teeny-screens on early gen cell phones. But, with smartphones and predictive text, aside from Twitter’s character limit, what’s the need*? Even though we might save money on our data plans and time spent typing, what is the true cost?

LOL-speak is meant to speed up the act of writing and relies on the reader’s ability to decipher the message. It generally works pretty well to pepper your writing with shorthand, but it is easy to lose reading comprehension when sentences consist of more abbreviations than not. Readers must struggle through the message and its meaning is lost. Realistically, LOL-speak will never die, but my beef is not really with the abbreviations. My concern is with its impact to society as a whole. What happens when our communications are reduced a string of barely comprehensible letters and numbers, sorely lacking in punctuation? Ask any writer what makes a good writer. They’ll tell you that it’s reading – reading everything, reading often. It is how we learn basic sentence structure, proper punctuation, and how to convey meaning. Reading imparts grammar wisdom more than any classroom lesson can. It’s actually quite beautiful how much we learn from reading without even realizing it.

Society moves at a lightning pace and people who take the time to read and absorb the likes of Shakespeare, Wilde, Orwell, Austen, Atwood, and Ondaatje are becoming increasingly rare. For most young people, reading is a chore forced upon them, and they are too busy hating their homework to appreciate what they are reading; that’s nothing new. But if you are constantly faced with incorrect punctuation in social media, online, and restaurant signage and menus (Entre’s), it is easy to become confused on what’s right. The result is no matter how many times you Google how to use an apostrophe, it doesn’t stick if you don’t see correct examples every day.

Let’s take that example – the apostrophe. A very small portion of the English-speaking population know how to properly use this punctuation mark. I’m willing to bet that those under the age of 30 who do know how to use it correctly are either ESL (who learned grammar to learn the language) or they are true word nerds. The more people see an improperly-place apostrophe, the more confused they are about how to use it properly, and they end up mimicking what they see. And often what they see is wrong. Misuse is now so common, I recently saw it in our local paper – and worse, on communications coming home from my child’s school. (Quick grammar lesson: An apostrophe does not make a plural. More than one cat = cats, not cat’s. An apostrophe is there to show possession. The cat has kittens = The cat’s kittens. Of course, that’s thrown for a loop when considering “its” and “it’s.” But, that’s actually pretty simple, too, because “it’s” is a contraction for “it is.” It is raining = It’s raining. “Its” is used for possessive. Leaves are falling from the tree = The tree is losing its leaves. If you can replace “its” with “his” or “her”, you’re using it correctly. Confused? Check out the Oatmeal for a flow chart. )

Sadly, I’ve almost learned to accept apostrophe abuse. Almost. What really horrifies me now is the complete lack of punctuation. Punctuation isn’t optional. It’s required for reading comprehension. The misplaced apostrophe, while cringe-worthy, is easy enough to parse. But, missing commas can completely change the meaning of sentences.

Take, for example, the simple phrases “Let’s eat grandma!” and “Let’s eat, grandma!” Those are two totally different sentences – one with a rather extreme and cannibalistic outcome.

By now, you probably think that I have turned into that fuddy-duddy who yells at kids to get off my lawn. I did say it is a divisive issue. Does it only bug me because I make my living providing clear, crisp, and concise content for my clients?** Maybe. But, hopefully, now that I’ve brought it to your attention, you’ll start to see more and more examples of missing or incorrect punctuation. Not just in social media, but legitimate news sites, magazines, or Buzzfeed articles. You might even notice that you aren’t using periods in your text and IM conversations. Sending the message has replaced end punctuation in many sentences. Ben Clair explains what happened to the period in this article in the New Republic.)

Ask yourself, if this is what we are doing to the English language now, what will we be doing in 30 years? Does it matter? Do we accept the changes as evolution and teach our kids how to use emojis to convey meaning? Or do we do our best to make our kids into readers and teach them to recognize a really great sentence? Will the English language be something else in the future?

Luckily, there are still a few pro-punctuation proponents out there who can make sure your comma placement and apostrophe use is spot on. Send an email to Spark Content to see if the grammar in your customer-facing content changes your meaning. We love this stuff!

* Threaded SMS makes the SMS 160 character limit a non-issue.

** Ahh, alliteration! See? Grammar can be fun.