Flid eller fejl på Facebook: et komparativt studie i danske gymnasieelevers stavefejl på Facebook og i danskopgaver

The Danish language is a tough language to master, even for native speakers. There are great differences between the orthography and the spoken language – which leads to lots of spelling errors. New trends such as virtual social networks add new aspects to the language and they influence people’s habits and their approach to the Danish language. This paper counts the numbers of different spelling errors in students’ home assignments and on their Facebook profiles to observe in which media they made the most spelling errors. Furthermore the spelling errors were placed in different categories to see if one or more kinds of spelling errors were more prevalent than others. The findings suggest that students produce approximately double the amount of spelling errors on Facebook than in their home assignments. It is important to note that the girls produced a remarkably greater amount of spelling errors on their Facebook profiles than in their home assignments, whereas there was little difference between the boys’ results. Some categories of spelling errors were more prevalent that others in the two different medias. Missing capital letters in proper names were common on Facebook, whereas the students seemed to have more problems with compounds in their home assignments. These findings might suggest that the Danish language is changing due to influence of SMS- and internet language. The borders of correct and incorrect Danish are getting shadier as the norms of the internet and various other means of communication begin to set the standard of the written word