While some of us oldies still have a fair old way to go to decipher the younger generation’s text abbreviations when texting a message on a mobile phone; however it appears that the usage of the shortened English is quite valuable with written English for many kids.

According to an article over on reghardware, a new British study shows that kids that frequently use the shortened text terms are unlikely to lack reading skills and be bad at spelling,

Reader in Developmental Psychology at Coventry University, Dr. Clare Wood studies a group of children between the ages of 8 and 12 over 1 academic year while they used ‘textsims’, you know the kind of thing, hmwrk, pls, tb, and stuff like that.

Wood came to the conclusion that texting looks to be a valuable form of contact with written English for many kids and allows them to practice spelling and reading on a daily basis. Wood also remarks that the decline in literacy standard is not because of text messaging.

All well and good, but I have kids albeit older and when they send me messages with textisms, sometimes it can be quite baffling, and as an author I find that the shortened usage of words can at times be most annoying.