Ars Technica reports on a recent study which shows that instant messaging may not be ruining students' writing abilities after all as many might believe. For instance,

Researchers Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis studied over a million words from IM communications and compared it to more than 250,000 spoken words of those between the ages of 15 and 20. The two found that, while written and spoken speech share some similarities, IM communications actually leaned toward the formal side.