Chat slang creeps into teens' assignments

It's nothing to LOL about: Despite best efforts to keep school writing assignments formal, two-thirds of teens acknowledge in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in. The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Thursday, also found that teens who keep blogs or use social-networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace have a greater tendency to slip nonstandard elements into assignments. The results may give parents, teachers and others a big :( — a frown to the rest of us — though the study's authors see hope. (... more)