Social Media Makes Sloppy Language Grow More Publicly

JAKARTA – Researchers say the apostrophe may die because of the sloppy grammar used on social media.

They say online platforms like Twitter, which limit the number of characters per post, are starting to get users into the habit of removing punctuation.

This study is the largest study of how to speak and write, having developed since the spread of technology from the 1990s.

Researchers looked at 100 million words to analyze trends and found casual, ungrammatical language has become more common in the last 30 years.

Dr. Vaclav Brezina, who led the Lancaster University study, said: “We have experienced dramatic changes in technology, which are changing the way we communicate. Written language has become much more dynamic and owned by more people.”

“We text or message friends and colleagues and get an immediate response, but we may have trouble remembering the last time we wrote a letter. More people are also producing content for a general audience through social media and websites.”

One doesn't have to be a journalist or a novelist to reach thousands or millions of people.'

The study says such use of social media has promoted so-called "progressive spelling", such as "gunna" to replace the term "going to".

There are also abbreviations, such as "defo" for definitely plus initials like 'OMG' for 'oh my God' and 'TBH', for to be honest, and even OTW for "on the way".

Twitter users often discard punctuation and longer words because posts are limited to 280 characters. The internet also carries words related to technology, such as 'vlog', 'fitbit', and 'bitcoin'.

Academics analyzed how many times per million words were used in the early 1990s compared to now.

They found an 8 percent drop in the use of quotation marks after plural nouns from 308.47 uses per million in the 1990s to 282.88 uses per million now.

There was also a 52 percent drop in “whom” and a 60 percent drop in “shall'.

Titles like “Mr” and “Mrs.” decreased due to the use of first names. Meanwhile, the use of the word "amazing" (amazing) actually jumped from 16.6 times to 88.6 times per million.

This development was not welcomed by the traditionalists. Former school principal Chris McGovern, from the Campaign for Real Education, said: "The loss of quotes is a symptom of linguistic laziness and stupidity."

The study looks at British English across genres including newspapers, TV shows, blogs, fiction, and academic writing.