An analysis of turkish language teachers' use of social media in terms of orthography or spelling: The case of facebook

In this study, which aims to examine the written language used by Turkish teachers on social media in terms of the use of punctuation marks and spelling rules, qualitative methods were used in collecting and analyzing the purpose-oriented data. Research; It is based on the analysis of postings in a Facebook group created with the participation of teachers by modeling with the basic qualitative pattern in terms of punctuation and spelling rules. In the Facebook group, which includes more than forty thousand Turkish and literature teachers and prospective teachers in the same fields as well as faculty members working in Turkish education, 1596 posts were examined in accordance with the criteria determined by the researcher in the light of literature and qualitative methods. The data generated by these submission texts were collected and processed through three different checklists that were created by the researcher and approved by the expert opinion. The data collected from Facebook group were analyzed by thematic analysis method. The results obtained from the analysis were divided into three themes: the use of punctuation marks, correct and correct use of punctuation marks, and spelling errors. The categories that form the themes and the codes within the categories are presented with examples. The results presented by thematic results were obtained: Punctuation marks were used in most of the postings, punctuation was never used in some of them, partially used in some of them or emotion symbol was used instead of punctuation. When punctuation marks were examined in terms of proper and correct usage, punctuation errors were detected due to the use of punctuation marks, unnecessary and incorrect use of punctuation marks, the use of emotion symbols instead of punctuation marks, the use of signs not found between punctuation marks, and the spaces to be considered before and after punctuation marks. When the postings were examined in terms of spelling errors, spelling errors related to spelling of compound words, spelling of capital letters, spelling of attachments, spelling of abbreviations and spelling of words were determined. Keywords: Punctuation, social media usage, spelling rules, Turkish teachers.