The English language is quickly going by the wayside thanks to texting. A study conducted by Wake Forest shows that SMS abbreviations are the culprit for the abundance of meager grammar these days.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing a teenager’s text message and wondered if a five year old had composed it, you might not be far from the truth. Middle school students who frequently use "text-speak" bombed on a test of basic grammar.  

Drew P. Cingel, a doctoral candidate in media, technology, and society at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. who published the study while at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., found that the more often students sent text messages using text-speak, the worse their grammar.

When tweens or those between the age group of 10 to 12 write in techspeak, they often use shortcuts, such as homophones, omissions of non-essential letters and initials, to quickly and efficiently compose a text message.

"They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for great, or an initial, like, LOL for laugh out loud," Drew Cingel, from Northwestern University, said in a statement.

"An example of an omission that tweens use when texting is spelling the word would, w-u-d," Cingel said.

The researchers also asked participants to note the number of adaptations in their last three sent and received text messages.

"Overall, there is evidence of a decline in grammar scores based on the number of adaptations in sent text messages, controlling for age and grade," Cingel said.

One British student composed an essay entirely in text-speak. “My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc,” wrote the student, reported the Telegraph.

“I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate,” the Telegraph said.

A study conducted by an assistant professor of Broadcast Communications at Pittsburgh University at Bradford earlier this year said that text messaging during class lectures was the reason learning was on the decline.

“College students may believe that they can multitask in class, but the real concern is not whether they are capable of such behavior but how it affects their attention to classroom instruction,” said Professor Wei, who was in charge of the study.

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