F in grammar? Maybe it's your phone's fault: texting and tweeting are getting teens in trouble when they have to write in the real world.

• Author: Potenza, Alessandra
• Position: EDUCATION

"I saw your notice for a Office manager," the woman in her 20s had written, "the very position that I believe I could fill well I have a background in education and a Bachelors" degree in Kinesiology."

When Cena Babineaux, who works at the YMCA of Greater Houston, read the woman's job application, she knew she wouldn't be calling her in for an interview.

In the more than 2,000 applications submitted by young people this past summer, Babineaux encountered mountains of misspellings, missing punctuation, spacing mistakes, and abbreviations that are fine in text messages but not in formal writing. To her, these kinds of errors show laziness and lack of care. If she finds them on a resume or cover letter, she tosses the application aside and moves on to other candidates.

"If you want the job, you need to make sure that everything is done properly," she says.

Babineaux isn't the only one who doesn't like what she's reading. English teachers, college admissions officers, and employers are all finding a lot more grammar and writing mistakes than they used to. The problem seems to be increasing in the age of texting, tweeting, and Facebook.

"If you are constantly using a particular slang term, or a particular shortcut or abbreviation," says Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D.C., "it may not be surprising that that ends up creeping into your [school] work."

A 2008 study of teenage grammar use in the digital age found that 64 percent of teenagers used informal writing styles typical of electronic communication in their schoolwork. Fifty percent used informal capitalization, 38 percent used abbreviations like LOL, and 25 percent used emoticons. And that was five years ago. Since then, texting has exploded, with young people leading the way.

Spell-check's Perils

Teachers say the informal language of texting is showing up more and more in class. "IM-ing language ... has become part of what [students] think is the standard vocabulary," says Karra Shimabukuro, an English teacher at Manteo High School, in Manteo, North Carolina. She says words at the beginning of sentences and personal names are rarely capitalized; numbers are used instead of letters, and "u" often substitutes for "you."

In college admissions offices, a pattern of mistakes on applications can make a school think twice about making an offer. Kelly Walter, the admissions director at Boston University, once read an application referencing three...