That said, I recognize that I’m judgemental – I look at people who write that way and I see laziness and a disregard for the rules of the English language. Call me judgemental, but I’m rarely wrong about them, either.

If a high school grad today filled out a job application using her day-to-day text chat terminology she wouldn’t likely get a call for an interview. So, yes, she does need to learn traditional American English. Likewise she must learn professional conversational English. But is that because it is the be all, end all of communication in this country? Or is it because the people most likely to be reading her resume and interviewing her don’t speak ‘text’? The generation gap has something to do with acceptance of new words and phrases.

That said, I think what I meant is this – I’ve noticed the standard for blogs, online “newspapers” and even online versions of mainstream media (e.g. NYTimes, WSJ) has decreased. It seems that, particularly with the advent of “professional blogging” (a broad category, of course), the amount of writing online that ever sees an editor has decreased. Blogs written by journalists in particular (think The Lede) have shockingly low standards of grammar of spelling.

Considering all of that, perhaps I was a bit harsh on “us” (being your average bloggers and Twitter users) – we ARE, in fact, writing more. I think what I mean is that, when standards are lower across the board, our own standards for what’s acceptable decrease as well. We consider it okay to write things like “B4″ because we see the pros do it.

I was always taught that “practice doesn’t make perfect – perfect practice makes perfect.” Therefore, the idea that we’re practicing writing “skills” is questionable – skills do improve over time, but if we’re not practicing them properly, how can they ever grow? – Jillian