When tweeting, facebooking or texting, students purposely use bad grammar or abbreviations to get their point across.

Some argue that it may affect how students communicate in a professional setting others say it’s nothing to worry about.

Tim Regan-Porter with Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University says, “I think a lot of the things people do sometimes intentionally wrong in social media. Abbreviations the misspellings, I think they know that those are intentional things you do that are appropriate to the format but not appropriate when you are writing a professor or a job application letter.”

Regan-Porter has dealt with hundreds of college interns for over a decade. And he says by the time students get to college they usually remember to use proper grammar.

“By the time students get to college it doesn’t seem to have a negative effect they tend to be able to differentiate between what’s appropriate in a social channel and what’s appropriate for different types of writing,” said Regan-Porter.

While using bad grammar might make your high school English Teacher cringe, Regan-Porter says it is something for them to be aware of and help students remember to switch their texting slang into proper grammar when needed.

“I think it’s something to be cognitive of. I think teachers particularly high school teachers need to make an effort to reinforce in their students what’s appropriate for what context and make sure they think about it when they write, who is the audience and what’s the medium.”

And as long as students remember what language is appropriate when necessary he says it’s ok for students to use bad grammar for practical reasons when texting or using social media.