Email

I really don't use email that much for sending things to other people, its usually me receiving things from other people or businesses. Email is less informal then an actual letter, and therefore people tend to forget proper grammar, spelling, and above all, abbreviating things that in normal society would be spelled out properly. Of course, its hard to keep any correspondence with anyone as most email inboxes now a days are flooded with spam and other worthless junk.

When dealing with writing, I don't think anything has harmed the American public's ability to write properly more then Instant Messaging. The abbreviations, the net speak, the emoticons, they have all slowly made their way into other places in our culture. School age kids are especially susceptible to this as this is where they do the majority of their writing early in life and fall into the bad habit.

I personally have realized how bad I have gotten and have slowly been working on getting back to proper writing, however it is a long process that will take a lot of work.