Good Spellers Write more Textism than Bad Spellers in Instant Messaging: The Case of French

Abstract

The increased use of digital writing has led to the emergence of a new form of communication between discourse and writing. We elaborated a research protocol to target the processes linked to the use of instant messaging to look for differences in the use of spelling modifications as a function of French students' spelling levels. The task required students to use Digital Writing in Instant Messaging (DWIM) in a semi-natural situation. Analyses showed that modifications that may be confused with misspellings in traditional writing (i.e. substitutions like " sa " instead of " ça ") occurred more often than those that may not (e.g. reductions/ alterations like " chepa " instead of " je ne sais pas "), regardless of spelling level. These results show no impact of the use of DWIM on the quality of spelling (for good spellers only).

Full text

PsychNology Journal, 2014
Volume 12, Number 1-2, 45 – 63
45
Good Spellers Write more Textism than Bad Spellers in
Instant Messaging: The Case of French
Tonia Lanchantin∗1,
Aurélie Simoës-Perlant1 and Pierre Largy1
1Université de Toulouse 2 – Le
Mirail, Toulouse (France)
ABSTRACT
The increased use of digital writing has led to the emergence of a new form of
communication between discourse and writing. We elaborated a research protocol to target
the processes linked to the use of instant messaging to look for differences in the use of
spelling modifications as a function of French students’ spelling levels. The task required
students to use Digital Writing in Instant Messaging (DWIM) in a semi-natural situation.
Analyses showed that modifications that may be confused with misspellings in traditional
writing (i.e. substitutions like “sa” instead of “ça”) occurred more often than those that may
not (e.g. reductions/ alterations like “chepa” instead of “je ne sais pas”), regardless of
spelling level. These results show no impact of the use of DWIM on the quality of spelling
(for good spellers only).
Keywords: Instant messaging (textism), Teenagers, Spelling, Writing, Writing.
Paper Received 06/04/2014; received in revised form 25/08/2014; accepted 25/08/2014.
1. Introduction
It seems hard to know what kind of impact the use of digital writing has on the quality
of spelling production. Taking the spelling level into account could be a starting point to
answer this question.
First, we introduced (a) a description of Instant Messaging, traditional and digital
writing to provide (b) a definition of DWIM use and its impact on spelling through a
description of discourse and writing. We also made (c) a literature review on what has
been found about using texting and instant messaging and (d) about its impact on
spelling production.
Cite as:
Lanchantin, T., Simoës-Perlant, A., & Largy, P. (2014). Good spellers write more textism than bad spellers
in instant messaging: The case of French. PsychNology Journal, 12(1-2), 45 – 63. Retrieved [month] [day],
[year], from www.psychnology.org.
*Corresponding Author:
Tonia Lanchantin,
Department of Psychology, University of Toulouse 2
5 Allées Antonio Machado, Bureau P108, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, +33 5 61 50 35 80
E-mail: tlanchan@univ-tlse2.fr

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
46
Secondly, we chose to see whether or not spelling level would have something to do
with the amount of modifications produced by French adolescents enrolled in 8th grade
and which kind of modification they would use the most.
1.1 Towards an analysis of Instant Messaging (IM)
Throughout the world, the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
has expanded extensively in the past few years (Zhang, Aikman and Sun 2008). Such
technologies include everything related to hardware and software (Hudson, 2006;
Mairesse, Cette and Kocoglu 2000). A French survey showed that among all digital
activities on the Internet, 85% of the 14-25 year olds answered using the Internet to
search for information, 76% said they had a profile on a social network, and 67%
indicated that they wrote instant messages (Ipsos 2011). Furthermore, Fairon, Klein
and Paumier (2006a) specified that Instant Messaging (IM) was one of the most
popular tools on the Internet for communication.
IM as a digital tool is often compared with Short Message System (SMS), which is a
mobile phone option created in 1992 that allows one to text (Simoës-Perlant et al.,
2012). IM and texting display similarities of form, use of abbreviations and content.
They are similarly viewed as time-saving means of communication (Panckhurst, 2009).
While research about texting is becoming more prevalent (e.g., Coe and Oakhill,
2011; Drouin and Davis 2009; Drouin 2011; Fairon Klein and Paumier 2006a; Kemp
and Bushnell, 2011; Plester and Wood, 2009a; Plester, Lerkkanen, Linjama,
Rasku!Puttonen and Littleton 2011; Simoës-Perlant et al., 2012), studies that relate
specifically to writing in IM are limited in number. The limited number of signs per text
message and some financial reasons were often used to explain the emergence of new
written forms such as abbreviations (Pétillon, 2006). But IM never had a cost and such
written forms also appeared on computer screens. So it seems that the development of
these spelling variants may be due to the fact (a) that users wanted to save time while
typing; and (b) that it reflects current social practices and conventions.
Furthermore, some differences have become obsolete such as the fact that people
still use their ten fingers in IM but usually text with their thumbs (Ling and Baron, 2007).
But communication in IM still occurs in real time more broadly than in texting, even if
both tools are now available on smartphones. On an IM account, it is possible to make
use of a chat window where the whole conversation between two parties or more is
transcribed. The user can write his/her digital messages on a word processing bar and
then choose an emoticon to elaborate on what has been said. Users can add

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
47
photography to their name or pseudonym to complete their profile, and can keep track
of the status of their contacts (e.g. on-line, off-line, or busy).
1.2 From traditional writing to digital writing
IM allows people to correspond in a less formal way than is possible through letters to
meet the demands of instantaneous communication (Anis, De Fornel and Fraenkel,
2004; Fairon Klein and Paumier, 2006a; Marcoccia, 2004a, 2004b; Panckhurst, 1997,
2003). New forms of writing have consequently appeared, variously referred to as (a)
“oralisations” (Bouillaud, Chanquoy and Gombert, 2007), (b) “textisms” (Plester, Wood
and Joshi, 2009b), “SMisms” (Macedo-Rouet, 2010) or (c) “grammatical violations”
(Wood, Kemp, Waldron and Hart, 2014). None of these terms fully applies to IM since
they refer either to (a) only one part of spelling variants or (b) to texting, or (c) to
something that is not “legal”. If French is mostly based on phoneme-to-grapheme
correspondence (it is 80% phonogrammic, Rafoni, 2007), 20% of the language is not
phonogrammic (i.e. a phoneme is the smallest sound unit, and a grapheme its written
transcription).
It seems important to better understand the structure of each traditional system (both
spoken and written) to know the structure of digital writing and find the appropriate term
to define the deviations from standard spelling that are used in IM. Spoken and written
traditional systems have to be used within a clearly defined set of syntactic and lexical
rules (Demougin, 2003). Written conventions tend to complicate the structure of
sentences if compared to oral sentences, both in lexical and syntactic ways. We have
to be more specific when we write something, and thus to provide more information
about the location, non-verbal clues, etc. Sometimes, the written language helps to
translate reality through the transcription of speech (e.g., I said to myself that…), and
then the use of deictic expressions becomes possible, which may not allow the
protagonist to be identified with certainty (Crystal, 2001). In contrast, speech allows
interlocutors to share and exchange information directly in a mutually understood
context. The lexicon of casual speech is often poor and sentences are often bound to
the here and now. However, deictic expressions do not have to be previously defined.
The distinction between oral and written forms of communication has become vaguer
due to digital writing bringing together some of the characteristics of oral and written
forms (Fairon Klein and Paumier, 2006a; Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant and Largy,
2012). Shortening utterances does not guarantee that the message will be understood
as if they had been spoken; hence emoticons may be used to improve communication

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
48
(Grinter and Eldridge, 2001). Regarding IM’s structure, Tagliamonte and Denis (2008)
mentioned that digital writing reflects the components of contemporary – or traditional –
English writing, and Baron (2010) that the use of lexical items in IM is reduced to a
minimum. Digital writing thus reflects the emergence of a “hybrid” form of
communication (Anis, 1998; Jalabert, 2006; Mourlhon-Dallies, Rakotonoelina and
Reboul-Touré, 2004; Pétillon, 2006; Tagliamonte and Denis, 2008). To focus on
modifications, many typologies have been done (e.g., Anis, 2003; Fairon, Klein, &
Paumier, 2006a; Kobus, François and Damnati, 2008; Liénard, 2008; Panckhurst,
2009; Simoës-Perlant et al., 2012; Véronis and Guimier de Neef, 2006). Every typology
focused on texting, except Panckhurst’s (2009). She worked on the production of
“eSMS” (for “texting online”, which includes every kind of written forms that looks like
texting, Panckhurst, 2010) to show “eSMS” structure. This tool is organized along four
categories (“substitutions” or the exchange of graphemes (e.g. “bo (beau)”);
“reductions/alterations” where one part of the word is not used (e.g. “vou (vous)”);
“deletions, absences or rarefaction” or the deletion of graphic signs (e.g. “ca (ça)”);
“increases and additions”, that includes the addition of graphic signs (e.g.
“suuuuupppeeerrr !!!!!”).
1.3 Impact of the use of DWIM on spelling
To a greater extent, research has examined links between traditional and digital
writing. Wood, Jackson, Plester and Wilde (2009), and Plester Wood and Joshi (2009b)
found positive links between digital writing and texting literacy. Plester Wood and Joshi
(2009b) invited British children from 10 to 12 years old who never owned a mobile
phone to text. They found that reading “textism” easily would allow better decoding.
Furthermore, bad readers would spend more time per day using their mobile phones
than good spellers. But good spellers would create more textism and read texts more
quickly than bad readers (Coe and Oakhill, 2011).
If we consider the impact on spelling, Bouillaud, Chanquoy and Gombert (2007)
gathered French 5th, 7th and 9th grade students together to write texts in traditional and
digital writing. Their results showed that the more the child knew the digital world, the
more he created “oralisations” in the dictation written on mobile phones. They also
concluded that a high spelling level was correlated to a larger creativity in texting, but
only for the 5th grade students. It was impossible to know if their participants used
textism that may be confused with misspellings on purpose or if they really did/did not
know how to spell words correctly in traditional writing. About this particular kind of

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
49
modifications referred to as “substitutions” in the present study, Jaffré (2006) showed
that both children and adults had the greatest difficulty in correctly writing verbal
homophones in French traditional and digital writing (e.g. -é/-és/-ée/-ées/-er /-ais/-ait/-
aient). In these cases, it is impossible to accurately determine whether it is a
modification or a misspelling. In another study, Plester, Wood and Bell (2008) proved
that 5th grade students who used textism the most got the best scores in spelling. They
indeed asked English-speaking participants between 10 and 12 years old to translate
some sentences from traditional to digital writing and vice versa. They concluded that
the amount of modifications may be related to spelling level (i.e. good spellers would
produce more textismthan bad spellers). Bernicot, Goumi, Bert-Erboul and Volckaert-
Legrier (2014) showed the same thing for French students). Other authors asked
teenagers and adults to text on a sheet of paper and on a mobile phone (De Jonge and
Kemp, 2012). Results showed that textism was negatively correlated with scores for
reading, spelling and morphological awareness. But Drouin (2011) demonstrated
positive correlation between the frequency of use of textism and literacy skills in terms
of reading fluency and spelling. The author also showed that there was a negative
correlation between the use of digital writing on social networks and e-mails and
reading skills. Other results showed no significant difference between children’s,
teenagers’ and adults’ production of “grammatical violations” when texting and literacy
skills (Wood, Kemp, Waldron and Hart, 2014). We can notice that there are a lot of
differences when it comes to list the results. According to Drouin (2011), all these
differences can be explained by such factors as procedures or population (e.g.
children, teenagers or adults).
1.4 Between spelling level and production of modifications: a real relationship?
Every teenager born after the emergence of digital writing learned how to read and
write while using both traditional and digital writing at the same time. People from the
previous generation started learning how to read and write traditionally. Most of the
studies that introduced a typology have been built on the written production of this
previous generation. It then seems important to build a typology that relates to the
production of teenagers but also that focuses on IM. IM is mostly synchronous
(contrary to texting that is mostly asynchronous) since it allows the production of text.
We also chose to focus on French and not on English since English spelling is reported
to be more opaque than French spelling (Seymour, Aro and Erskine, 2003), but the
latter includes a greater diversity of verbal homophones than English spelling.

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
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Consequently, it may be sometimes hard to say if one user wrote a textism on purpose
or if s/he really knows how to spell the word correctly in traditional writing, especially
when it does not alter the phonic value (Bouillaud, Chanquoy and Gombert, 2007).
Then, it seems important to discover the proportion of these modifications - referred to
as substitutions - to better define the impact of the use of IM on spelling. In addition, we
wanted to start from Plester, Wood and Bell’s conclusions (2008) (i.e. spelling level
may have an impact on the amount of textism).
As a consequence, it would be interesting (a) to make a typology to know the
proportion of substitutions, and (b) to compare the production on IM of good and bad
spellers, as Bernicot, Goumi Bert-Erboul and Volckaert-Legrier (2014) did for textism.
In their study, their participants never used a mobile phone before. We would like to
prove the same thing for teenagers who are used to produce DWIM for at least more
than a year.
If a teenager who uses a lot of textism were able to keep a good level in spelling, it
would be a first step to find no negative impact between the use of DWIM and the
spelling level (for good spellers only).
2. Method
We compared the DWIM productions of teenagers who were used to produce DWIM
on the basis of their spelling level. We were able to hypothesize that good spellers
would produce more modifications than bad spellers. We chose not to compare
traditional to digital writing, since we focused on the amount of modifications produced
in DWIM as function of the spelling level, and not on the amount of misspellings
produced in traditional writing as function of spelling level.
2.1 Participants
Forty French-speaking adolescents enrolled in 8th grade in the same French region,
regular users of texting and instant messaging, participated to the study. We chose this
grade since French students are supposed to have enough developed their spelling
skills.
All the participants completed a questionnaire (available in Lanchantin, Simoës-
Perlant and Largy, 2012) to assess traditional and digital habits in reading and writing.
It helped to constitute homogeneous groups and showed that good and bad spellers

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
51
had a good level of knowledge as regards the ICTs of which IM is a part (no significant
difference was noticed).
To constitute groups in accordance with their spelling abilities, we assessed students’
spelling by means of the French Spelling Level Test (SLT) of Doutriaux and Lepez
(1994). The SLT assesses standard spelling (e.g. how to spell charrette) and the
application of grammatical rules (e.g. the agreement of the past participle). The two
groups differed significantly with respect to SLT scores, t (38) = -9.458, p < .001, but
not with respect to age (cf. Table 1).
Group
Bad spellers
Good spellers
Gender
10 girls/10 boys
9 girls/11 boys
Average age
13.5
13.55
Standard deviation (age)
0.6
0.6
Average score (SLT)
(distinction threshold: 37)
31
40.1
Standard deviation (SLT
score)
3.6
2.36
Table 1 Participants’ characteristics
2.2 Ethical clearance
We ensured to respect the French “Code of conduct applied to researchers in
behavioral sciences” (Caverni, 1998).
We first contacted the head teachers of two different schools, who asked for the
students and their parents’ approval to participate to the study. Adolescents who
participated in the study gave their free and informed consent. We mentioned that they
could leave the scientific process at any time. Our material was built in such a way as
to leave no misunderstanding on any matter at all. We ensured that no one would feel
upset or hurt and that the objective of the study was clearly defined to participants.
We communicated our results to both head teachers of the schools, who were able to
provide the information to the participants. Their anonymity has been respected and
protected.
2.3 Material and procedure
Participants were asked to go to their school’s computer room since we did not want
to collect writing samples from the students themselves for confidentiality reasons (we

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
52
do know that the participants do not want to share personal information from home).
Participants were classmates, so they had to choose the peer they wanted to
communicate with. To ensure that there was no oral communication between the two
participants, they were asked to sit as far as possible from each other. Researchers
supplied each participant with an e-mail address, specially created for the occasion.
Participants had to open a window part for instant messages. They could see their e-
mail address on the upper left window and instant messages received in the middle;
they could write their instant messages in the taskbar at the bottom window and select
the emoticon they wanted.
To approximate a natural situation, the researchers asked the participants to produce
instant messages as if they were at home, on their own computer. Two conversation
topics were prepared in case a participant needed ideas, but their use was absolutely
not mandatory (i.e. their conception of friendship and career prospects).
The researchers organized two sessions of one hour each; (a) participants filled in the
questionnaire and SLT during the first session and (b) were invited to do a semi-
structured written production task on an IM website during the second session that
lasted for one hour. One hour of IM production was scheduled in order to highlight
automatisms linked to written production in IM.
3. Results
A typology was used to characterize the features of instant messages and then to
classify spelling modifications. It was submitted to an interrater reliability calculation –
or Cohen’s Kappa – (with two of the authors), which showed acceptable tolerance
(0.897).
We chose to organize the typology on the basis of the study of Panckhurst (2009) and
the alteration/non alteration of the phonic value of words (this criterion results from the
work of Catach (1980) who chose such indicator to classify the different kind of
misspellings).
The typology is divided into three parts:
- All kinds of additions that include either an alteration or a non-alteration of the
phonic value (cf. Table 2).

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
53
Table 2 Additions
Additions
Examples (form the
corpus)
Addition of letters
Addition of punctuation marks
Copied/pasted tool
D'acccccccccccccccc
!!!!!
http://www.ffnatation.fr
2. All kinds of substitutions that include a non-alteration of the phonic value (cf.
Table 3).
Table 3 Substitutions
Substitution
Examples (corpus)
Extra-substitutions (on several words) :
! Deletion of diacritical marks replaced by spaces
! Graphic overwritings
! là bas (là-bas)
! quil (qu’il)
Whole substitutions (on one word) :
! A word replaced by a letter/an arithmetical sign
! A shorter homophone
! c (c’est),
1 (un)
! ses (c’est), a (à)
Incomplete substitutions (missing letters in a word):
! One letter takes the place of another
! A long grapheme replaced by a shorter or a most
frequent grapheme. It could be either:
- A digraph replaced by a letter or a sign (e.g.
arithmetical);
- A trigraph replaced by a letter or digraph.
! cinon (sinon),
tu (Tu)
- é → et
- bo → beau
Deletion of a letter with no phonic value
salu (salut),
pane (panne)
Variants of French words:
! Of existing words
! Anglicism
! mwa (moi)
! bugger

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
54
- All kinds of reductions/alterations that include an alteration of the phonic value (cf.
Table 4).
Table 4 Reductions/alterations
Reductions
Examples (corpus)
Extra-reductions (on several words) :
! Initials: letters read one after the other,
Acronym: group of letters read as a
word would be;
! Graphic overwritings on one or several
words;
! Emoticons and other graphic signs.
! mdr (mort de rire),
lol (laughing out loud)
! chepa (je ne sais pas)
! "
Whole reductions (for one word):
! Truncations, slang
! Consonantal skeletons (Anis, 2003)
! ciné (cinéma)
! slt (salut)
Incomplete reductions or alterations:
! Deletion of a letter/diacritical mark
! Replacement of a letter by another
! ui (oui)
! connécance (connaissance)
Variants of French forms:
! Words of another language
! Modifications of French words
! bye
! po (pas)
These data were submitted to 2 groups (bad spellers vs. good spellers) x 3 types of
modifications (additions vs. substitutions vs. reductions/alterations), with mixed design
ANOVAs. The percentage of modifications with regard to the total number of words per
participant was taken into account.
Mauchly’s tests were used to test the sphericity theory. If the sphericity theory were
rejected, we would have used Greenhouse-Geisser’s correction. Each result was
reported with a partial Eta squared ŋ²p as effect size. If ŋ²p < .06, the effect is small; if
.06 < ŋ²p < .14, the effect is medium; if ŋ²p > .14, the effect is high (Cohen 1988).
First, we wanted to know which group would use modifications the most. As a
consequence, we compared the quantity of modifications produced by participants from
both groups (i.e. good and bad spellers). The group effect was found to be significant,

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
55
F(1,38) = 4.83, p < .04, ŋ²p = .11. Consequently, if we consider the total amount of
modifications, good spellers produced more modifications (59.57%; SD= 21.24) than
bad spellers (43.93%; SD= 23.68). It means that the higher the spelling level the more
modifications are produced. Second, we wanted to know if spelling level would cause a
differentiated use of additions and reductions/alterations. As a consequence, we
compared the three kinds of modifications (i.e. additions, substitutions and
reductions/alterations) to know which was the most used. The kind of modifications
effect was also found to be significant, F (2,76) = 75.18, p < .001, ŋ²p = .66. If we
consider the total amount of words in the corpus, the larger proportion was correctly
spelled (48.24%; SD = 23.57). If we focus on textism, substitutions (31.27%; SD =
2.87) represented the kind of modification that was the most used over
reductions/alterations (18.93%; SD =1.3) and additions (1.56%; SD = 0.45). This effect
was significant for both groups and between (a) additions (1.56%; SD = 0.45) and
substitutions (31.27%; SD = 2.87), t(39) = -9.858, p < .001, which shows that
substitutions were more used than additions; between (b) additions (1.56%; SD = 0.45)
and reductions/alterations (18.93%; SD = 1.3), t(39) = -13.984, p < .001, where
reductions/alterations were more used than additions; and between (c) substitutions
(31.27%; SD = 2.87) and reductions/alterations (18.93%; SD = 1.3), t(39) = 4.5, p <
.001, where substitutions were more used than reductions/alterations. Some words
were used with the good spelling (48.24%; SD = 23.57).
When the kinds of modification were considered separately (i.e., additions of good
spellers and additions of bad spellers, substitutions of good spellers and substitutions
of bad spellers, reductions/alterations of good spellers and reductions/alterations of
bad spellers) to determine the interaction effect, results indicated a non-significant
difference between both groups.
4. Discussion
This study aimed (a) at making a typology based on the instant messages production
of French-speaking adolescents to know the proportion of textism that alter the phonic
value of words and (b) at comparing the production on IM of good and bad spellers.
Then, if good spellers are able to keep a good spelling level while they use DWIM, it
would help to conclude that the use of DWIM is not as negative as it is thought.

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
56
It was found that the proportion of the different kinds of textism as compared to the
whole corpus differed across all groups. The proportion of substitutions (31.27%) is
significantly higher than the proportion of reductions/alterations (18.93%) and additions
(1.56%). This may help to show that teenagers modify the spelling of some words, but
mainly respect their phonic value (48.24% among all words were not modified). Fairon,
Klein and Paumier (2006b) qualified these modified words as “place of resistance”.
Our results confirmed our hypothesis, which stipulated the spelling level has an
impact on the production of modifications: the higher the spelling level the more
modifications were used. These results show no impact of the use of DWIM on the
quality of spelling (for good spellers only). As Plester, Wood and Bell (2008) and
Bernicot, Goumi, Bert-Erboul and Volckaert-Legrier (2014), we showed that the amount
of textism was significantly higher for good spellers than bad spellers. The first group
used 59.57% of textism with regard to the total number of words (i.e. 40.43% of words
were used with the good spelling) whereas the second group used 43.94% of textism
(i.e., 56.06% of words were used with the good spelling). In both cases, participants
used more words with the good spelling than words with the modified spelling. As
mentioned before, this study would be a first step to say that the use of textism by good
spellers would have no negative impact on the quality of spelling. It is impossible to
conclude the same thing for bad spellers. It is thus extremely important to focus on the
impact of DWIM use on the spelling performance of bad spellers. Pétillon (2006) was
already worried about the performance gap that could increase between French
students who know how to modify the language and who feel very good about it, and
those who still do not own strong literacy skills that would allow playing with the
language.
But sometimes, it is impossible to confirm that a textism is not a misspelling. When a
word included several kind of textism (e.g. mintenen instead of maintenant which
means now in English), we counted and classified two modifications (i.e. S3.2 for the
modification of ain in in and S4 for the deletion of the final t) but the digraph an written
en was not taken into account, since it was considered as a misspelling. We had the
same problem than Bouillaud, Chanquoy and Gombert (2007) because we were
unable to determine if some forms corresponded to a misspelling or to a real
modification (e.g. ain instead of in in the word maintenant).
Besides, we have to take into account the structure of French orthography to
understand how modifications are structured. The values of a letter can be very
different (e.g. the letter s has seven values) or not (e.g. the letter j has only one value)

Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: closer to the oral code than to the written code
57
(Cellier, 2003). Then, (a) the basic value is the most frequent (e.g. the letter s generally
corresponds to the phoneme [s], as in the word salut – hi in English – that is not
suppressible or replaceable in digital writing). But it may also get (b) a position value
when it is in intervocalic position (e.g. the letter s is read [z] in the word précise –
precise in English – that could be replaced by a z in digital writing). When the letter
gets (c) an auxiliary value, it is because its suppression would alter the phonic value of
the word (e.g. the letter e in the word petite – little in English – could be unused in
DWIM, as in une petit fille – a little girl in English). Silent letters with no phonic value
(Riegel, Pellat and Rioul, 1994) get (d) a zero value and are often unused in digital
productions (Anis, 2003). However, these letters usually supply grammatical or spelling
information (as the final t in the word petit allows the inflexion petite), or etymological
information (as the letter g in the word doigt that helps to spell the word digital). Double
consonants are regularly unused in digital writing because they are often useless (e.g.
the word aprendre, usually spelled apprendre in French – learn in English). The last
category includes (e) digraphs and (f) trigrams, already defined supra. Other graphic
signs may have a value. Emphasis defines every expression that translates an
accentuation or an insistence (Riegel, Pellat and Rioul, 1994), and generally
corresponds to emoticons in IM (Dresner and Herring, 2010; Varnhagen et al., 2010).
But these graphic signs are different, since they get a semantic value that means either
an action (e.g. to eat) or a feeling (e.g. to be sad) (Dresner and Herring, 2010).
If we knew that substitutions were problematic, we now know their proportion. In future
studies, it will help to better define the use of DWIM and its impact on the quality of
spelling. It would also be interesting to consider these different kinds of textism from a
qualitative perspective (i.e. based on values of letters). It would require to understand
what helps the production of textism, whether it is effective or not and to discover if the
efficiency of textism has a link with participants’ spelling level. The fact that one user of
digital writing may modify the same word differently has to be taken into account (Yvon,
2010) (e.g. the word nombreux in traditional writing – large in English – becomes nbrx
or nbr or nombreux in digital writing).
4.1 Conflict of Interest Statement
We were not bound to any company by an employment contract and did not receive
any financial support for conducting this study. We had to ask for the Inspection

T. Lanchantin, Simoës-Perlant, P. Largy
58
Académique, the head teachers and the teachers’ permissions to meet with students.
The method and approach has been peer reviewed to manage conflict of interest and
to guarantee that the ethical principles have been respected.
Students were free to participate and were then invited to participate to the study
during two hours of French classes. They did not receive any financial contribution for
their participation. However, they were highly motivated, since they had to write on an
instant messaging website.
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