"I tell them I find that annoying. If they can't take the time to write a full word, don't write to me." The ease with which young people communicate, though, can help in advancing literacy in a digital age. "In one sense, when you try to get a kid to sit down and write an essay, to write something more substantial, they have a lot of difficulty with that," Hargreave said. "I think we are getting a little bit of a loss when it comes to creating longer-form, story structures and paragraphs. "But on the flip side, with young people having to tighten up what they say, they are learning to write very precisely, to focus on what they want to say."
