Eleanor Johnson is a professor in the English and Comparative literature department at Columbia University who attributes a growing of language to the explosion of electronic communication.

Eleanor Johnson: "I think that text messaging has made students believe that it's far more acceptable than it actually is to just make screamingly spelling and grammatical errors."

Johnson says that her students, over the past several years, have increasingly used a more informal English vocabulary in formal assignments. University-level research papers, she says, are now being with casual phrases like "you know" and words like "guy", informal usages that were absent almost a decade ago. She attributes the change to instant and communication. She's also seen an increase in incorrect word use, with students reaching for a word that sounds correct, whose proper meaning is just from what they intend to say.

Eleanor Johnson: "For instance, using the word 'preclude' to mean 'precede.' Yeah, it sounds like 'precede,' but it means 'prevent.' And yet 'preclude' is not a particularly term. It just sounds a tiny bit fancier than precede and actually means something totally different."

Johnson says this kind of inaccurate word choice is happening so often now that she devotes a section of her class to the problem.

David Crystal is a British linguist and author of over 100 books, including 2001's Language and the Internet. Crystal says the dynamic of the Internet makes it difficult for comprehensive analysis of its effects to stay up-to-date. He had to revise the book in 2006 to keep up with the changing technology. But Crystal believes that the impact of the worldwide web on language remains minimal.

David Crystal: "When we look at the specific effects of the Internet on language or languages. Has English become a different language as a of the Internet? The answer has to be no."

Crystal says linguistic changes caused by the Internet run parallel to changes in the existing . What we are not seeing is an alteration, but additions to the language. Crystal also points to several studies by scholars of the Coventry University in England and University of Washington that support the same theme.

David Crystal: "So the main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive of language, providing the language with a new of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past."

Erin Jansen, founder of Netlingo, an online dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms, also says the new technology has not fundamentally changed existing language but added to the vocabulary. Jansen has worked in the Internet industry since 1994 and agrees with Crystal that what we're seeing is more ways to use language to communicate.

Erin Jansen: "Basically it's a freedom of expression."

Jansen says that while she has heard from frustrated educators about the new kinds of mistakes in spelling and grammar in student work, the expanding of expression brings benefits to the classroom as well.

Erin Jansen: "But I always , don't get angry or upset about that, get creative. If it's helping the student write more or communicate more in their first draft, great, that's what teachers and educators want, it's to get kids communicating."

Both Crystal and Jansen point to email as an example of people misunderstanding the Internet's overall effect. They say that electronic mail is often informal, and so many people do not use proper spelling or grammar. But they say this is more a reflection on the of the message than the writer's ability to use language correctly.

David Crystal: "If you say, just because I'm using forms, as I do, and change my punctuation, as I do, when I'm sending email, that it's affecting the rest of my written language, that, I'm afraid, simply doesn't happen."

While Eleanor Johnson believes there is a strong connection between widespread mistakes in writing and Internet usage, she that the scientific evidence might not exist yet to confirm her suspicions. As an educator, however, Johnson says that there is no other widespread cultural innovation to explain the radical in language usage she's seen over the past few years.

While the Internet's use of language might change rapidly over the next few years, Johnson, Crystal and Jansen all point out that educators need to ensure that students an academic understanding of the use and rules of language.

David Crystal: "One of the biggest things that should happen in relation to the Internet is that kids and adults, too, should be taught to it.