As we continue to immerse ourselves in this digital age, there is no question that people’s writing has changed to adapt to the new trends of communicating with one another. This was no different for me. When I started texting for the first time, I had no prior knowledge of the many abbreviations people use for certain phrases, such as “lol” (laugh out loud), “tbh” (to be honest), and “imo” (in my opinion). At the time, the education system’s more formal approach to writing molded me into an elementary school child who was not fully used to casual writing. The art of digital writing was something that I learned over time, with each new phrase and abbreviation acting like a milestone in my progress with this different way of communicating with my friends and family. 

          One of the first things that I learned from the friends I texted was the use of “XD” to show laughter. That was my first experience with the rules of writing being changed to show emotion, and eventually I reached a point where “XD” became a staple in my digital writing vocabulary. Then as years passed, I learned that these new changes are replaced very quickly. I saw friends go from saying “XD” after a funny joke to saying “lol” or “lmao” with several different variations depending on if every letter of the word is capitalized or lowercase and if extra letters are added to the end of the word to show your friend how funny their text was. I have even seen friends incorporate pictures to their writing as memes grew to have meanings that many people could understand even without words. And soon enough, these little intricacies I only saw in my friends’ writing became a part of my own writing. For me, digital technology made writing feel like an outlet for inspiration, and not the kind of inspiration found from reading books or watching movies, but the kind of inspiration that comes from sharing experiences with close ones and understanding their speech and writing habits. From my experience with texting friends and hanging out in instagram group chats (what my friends and I like to call “gcs”), I can say that I’ve seen how flexible and ever-changing language can be, and just like many people, I am one of those who changed how they write digitally after being influenced by the digital writing styles of the people I know so well. These habits may not align with the “correct” ways of approaching our language, but I honestly think that there is no such thing as a correct way of expressing yourself through language. Language is what you make it out to be during your interactions with the people around you, and while saying “lmao” in a research paper wouldn’t be accepted in the eyes of the education system, the unique usages of language that emerged from digital technology is important in its own way and has proven how emotional words can be if we are willing to go outside the invisible boundaries of language.