duz reely pore spelign mak yoy luk stoopid?

I soooo type like that sometimes

On TV, everything is already done for you -- you just passively "receive." When you read, however -- whether it's  Jackie Collins, Stephen King, Dickens, or Shakespeare -- your brain is very active, and working hard to come up with mental images to accompany the text-- which you have to decode. Even if you're reading stuff with pictures (Archie comics, a motorcycle mag, fashion mag, whatever), you are still being exposed to (generally) proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Whether you are aware of it or not, you are thus becoming a better writer every time you read, and also expanding your vocabulary.

 

Reading, in short, is simply very good for the brain, and very good for your language skills.

 The hurried/lazy "who cares about spelling and grammar" approach to writing on forums and in chat rooms (where most of today's youth do the vast majority of their writing) starts to affect how you write in other, more important places (school, work, etc.) where spelling and grammar, etc., really matter. After seeing or writing it online a hundred times, you start to believe that "alot" is a word, that "the" is spelled "teh," than "u" and "pwnd" are words, and that written language conventions just don't really matter. Used to tossing out knee-jerk, glib, one line responses as quickly as you can type, I also believe you start to lose the ability to converse on a deeper, more careful level. When you don't read much properly-written or challenging stuff, you get a stunted vocabulary, and with limited vocabulary comes limited thinking/problem solving abilities, and overall poorer communication skills. Poor communication abilities will negatively affect all of your relationships: marital, personal, work, etc.