An unearthly silence has fallen over campuses across the nation. The only sounds heard are the steps of students who are engrossed with what has become another appendage. Has tragedy struck? A new policy enforced? No, it is merely an obsession with smart phones. Communication has deteriorated into face-to-screen, resulting in auto correct becoming an important third party.
With mass diffusion of these devices, and since their strong hold in 1997, there has been a noticeable decline in the use of simple grammar and spelling. “LOL” and emojis are not a part of the English language, yet we see them scattered throughout adolescent writing. In the National Assessment of Education Program Writing, only an alarming 25 percent of fourth through 12th graders scored proficient. Younger generations are relying more on their autocorrect than on their third grade spelling tests.
Indeed there are advantages with the use of such technology, but it seems like there is more abuse than rational application. Autocorrect has left dictionaries and thesauruses dust ridden and teenagers unsure if “everyday” is one word or two. Let’s try disabling autocorrect for a week and force ourselves to seek out the proper spelling in a dictionary.
Lon Forsyth
Raymond, AB Canada
