The rising popularity of text messaging on mobile phones is a threat to writing standards among Irish school children, an Irish education agency* said last month.

The frequency* of errors in grammar and punctuation* has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year’s exam performance by 15-year-olds.

“The emergence* of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted* on standards of writing,” the report said.

“Text messaging, with its use of phonetic* spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional writing.”

The report said that, in many cases, students seemed “unduly* reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.”