The authors used microgenetic methods in 2 experiments to examine children's and adults' progress from initial attempts at spelling nonwords to later direct memory retrieval of the spellings. Participants repeatedly spelled nonwords presented in computerized, dictated-word spelling tests over several weeks. Following each spelling, participants provided retrospective strategy reports. Half of the children showed a gradual shift from spelling words with effortful backup strategies to fast retrieval; half of the children continued using backup strategies that were fast and effective for them. Relatively more adults shifted from backup strategies to retrieval, but otherwise their patterns of spelling development were quite similar to those of the children. This research provides support for the generalizability of the overlapping waves model to nonalgorithmic domains. It also demonstrates parallels between children and adults in learning to spell new words.

Written communication in instant messaging, text messaging, chat, and other forms of electronic communication appears to have generated a ''new language'' of abbreviations, acronyms, word combinations, and punctuation. In this naturalistic study, adolescents collected their instant messaging conversations for a 1-week period and then completed a spelling test delivered over instant messaging. We used the conversations to develop a taxonomy of new language use in instant messaging. Short-cuts, including abbreviations, acronyms, and unique spellings were most prevalent in the instant message conversation, followed by pragmatic signals, such use of emoticons, emotion words, and punctuation, and typographical and spelling errors were relatively uncommon. With rare exceptions, notably true spelling errors, spelling ability was not related to use of new language in instant messaging. The taxonomy provides an important tool for investigating new language use and the results provide partial evidence that new language does not have a harmful effect on conventional written language.