Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 7
Posts 1 - 7

Why Kids Can't Write

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, punctuation, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many students struggle with writing despite various pedagogical models that have been implemented in past years to tackle that perpetual issue. This is all the more suprising considering that today's students may do moret voluntary writing than any generation before it. They text and post on social media a lot but the writing register is different there. The format's main principle is shortness so grammar, spelling, and punctuation take a back seat.
Image Description | GIF of a hand writing and a group of teachers in a workshop.
Image Tags | female(s), gifs, text

France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | The French language is notoriously difficult to write and computer keyboards are not very well suited to facilitate typing for French typists. Important letters and diacritics are oftentimes hidden behind complicated shortcut combinations and discourage people from writing correctly in French. Since keyboards arrived, the false rumor that diacritics can be omitted on capital letters has spread around. Now the French governement is looking into designing a better keyboard standard for French typists.
Image Description | N/A

'Ha' Isn't a Laugh. Seriously?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 9.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | When the author of the article was dating a man and would text him jokes, she was surprised to see that he would always text her back with HAHAHAs (even if the jokes were not that funny). She then realized the HAHAHAs were not representative of his laugh, but it was the result of the autocorrect function. Even though textual representations of laughter go back to Chaucer and Shakespeare, the difference between HAHAHA or HA only exists nowadays. Michelle McSweeney, a researcher at Columbia University, says that laughter helps establish cohesion. There are many ways people can express laughter online: hahahahaha, haha, HAHAHA, haaaaaaa, hehe, lol, etc. In 2015, LOL was the most common way to express laughter online. Electronic laugh has been evolving like any other dialect.
Image Description | N/A

Mobile Devices' Built-In Keyboards Aren't the Last Word

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, smartphone, spelling, texting
Summary | The built-in keyboards that we have on our smartphones are the only options available. Gboard, a third-party keyboard app works the same way and also offers punctuation and emoji options. Gboard also offers some extras: for instance, its space bar also works as a track pad, and it incorporated a search feature into the keyboard. On Gboard, you can also glide-type. Another third-party keyboard app is SwiftKey. It's good at autocorrecting mistakes thanks to artificial intelligence. Finally, there are other available apps: Fleksy, Swype, and Microsoft's Word Flow.
Image Description | N/A

Bulletin! The 'Internet' Is About to Get Smaller

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 25.5.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | spelling, youth
Summary | The Associated Press' writing style board have decided to spell "internet" with a lowecase i. The word had been capitalized before, no one really knows why since it is not a brand name. Some speculate that "Internet" was capitalized because it was seen as so special and specific, like a physical place with a name. Now, however, the internet has become part of everyday life. Younger generations could not imagine a world without it. ''For younger people, it's always been there; it's like water.''
Image Description | Image of text: "Goodbye, Internet. Hello, internet!"
Image Tags | text

How I Became Addicted to Online Word Games

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.3.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, game, language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | There are plenty of stories about the horrors of online game addiction. But being addicted to online word games mimicking Boggle or Scrabble does not only have the same addiction-related issues but also messes with your vocabulary. These games have no penalty for guessing a word that might not even be one, which is why one just begins to memorize all words that the app accepts without really knowing what they mean. This obsessive toying with words may have a negative impact on our linguistics abilities as well as spelling, and so on.
Image Description | Illustration of a man with Scrabble tiles on his tongue reminiscent of party pills.
Image Tags | game, male(s)

Trump attaks and dishoners English

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 8.2.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, politics, spelling
Summary | The new president of the United States, Donald Trump, seems to be either incompetent of using correct spelling or just not caring enough about correctness to do so. In this past year of his election campaign and since the beginning of his administration, the president and his press staff have been caught making many spelling errors in words such as "honer", "attak", "chocke", "unpresidented", "loose/lose", and so on.
Image Description | N/A

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