low key

By: Liz Allen

Today’s teens, also known as Gen-Z, are infamous for their changes to the English language. This includes slangs, acronyms, word shortenings, and overall incorrect grammar usage. Is Gen-Z reinventing the wheel or just making it difficult to read and understand their writing? Before you make your decision, let’s go over some points of why not worrying about grammar while texting isn’t such a bad thing.

What is this grammatical errors trend, exactly? This trend consists of typing with a lack of capitalization, such as, “i” instead of “I,” shortening words like “u” instead of “you,” and not including commas or apostrophes into words and phrases. This phonenom has become the norm for the majority of teenagers; especially for casual texting. I would like to shine some light on a hot topic while also recognizing the minds of those one or two people in your life who you just cannot understand their way of texting.

There are some benefits to this way of text.

Number one: it’s easy. Who really wants to take the extra time to add all the seemingly useless punctuation and syntax when the people you’re messaging will understand what you mean anyway? For many, the convenience that the lack of grammar brings outweighs the informality that it comes with.

Number two: You gotta set the tone. With a typing format, it can be difficult to detect the mood someone is presenting; however, the all low-key letters can be a problem solver for this. This is because they bring about senses of closeness, kindness, and hurriedness. People who are close to each other can text with grammatical errors without worrying about making a good or formal impression. They know each other well, so it’s of no use to be proper with their punctuation. Not using capitals sets a softer tone than if someone were to use capitals. This, along with slang and acronyms, make the texter appear kind and relaxed as they have shown there is no need to be so formal. I’ve noticed that busy people, like my hair dresser, never use capitals or punctuation. If you see me text like this, that’s the reason. When I have little to no time to spare, proper grammar goes out the window.

Number three: aesthetic. There are multiple views of taking aesthetic purposes into your writing. The stereotype of this kind of grammar usage is that it’s shallow. If you’re being texted with such informality, does this person even care about what they’re saying to you? Or it could just be that cute and simple vibe the texter is looking to portray. To add onto that, poets like e e cummings have become icons for their unorthodox usages of capitalization. Whichever way you take it, the “uniqueness” of using slang and breaking the grammatical rules definitely allows some personality to shine through the tedious back and forth of texting.

Lastly, number four: it isn’t that deep. Texting is texting. Now, let me take you back to the starting question: has Gen-Z been reinventing the wheel or just making it difficult to comprehend their writing? Hopefully you have been let in on some unknown insight that will help you answer this question.