A top literacy expert says texting is undercutting the message that spelling still matters.
Professor Tom Nicholson, a professor of literacy education at Massey University, says spelling is more important than ever - yet it has become the "Cinderella" of teaching in many New Zealand schools, treated as a "low-status" subject.
"Students are receiving contradictory messages: at school, correct spelling is normal, and outside of school, texting, Snapchat, tweets are in abbreviated textspeak and as long as it sounds right then this is also normal," he says in an opinion article for the Herald.
Yet he warns: "A single spelling mistake can ruin the chance of a job when you send in an application. In the workplace, a text message or email sent with a spelling mistake puts the sender and the company in a bad light."
Nicholson, a longstanding advocate of teaching spelling by "phonic" rules, says spelling has been relegated to low status in NZ schools which now prize creative ideas instead.