Text Messaging

Oct. 18, 2006

“WUU2?  ATM am WK on that TXT MSG article.  ILBL8 but wl C U 2nite.  THX TTYL!”
 
If you understand what you just read (which translates as (“What are you up to? At the moment, I’m working on that text-messaging article. I’ll be late but will see you tonight. Thanks, talk to you later!”), then chances are you’re also familiar with the method of communication from whence it came.  If you just didn’t get it (and are still shaking your head in befuddlement), 
then congratulations - you’ve just been introduced to the ever-widening happening that is cell phone text messaging.
Otherwise known as SMS, or Short Message Service, text messaging is a service available on most of today’s mobile phones (in the States, usually for a fee or as part of a minutes package), and allows the sending back and forth of short messages made up of words, symbols, and numbers via the phone’s display screen.
“Short” being the operative word, hence the reasoning behind the entire lexicon of abbreviations and “Text Speak” that allows more information to be sent within a shorter number of characters. 
Although many individuals have contributed to the development of SMS, Finnish mobile phone communications pioneer Matti Makkonen is widely cred-ited with most of the idea, and the first commercial short phone text message was sent back in early December of 1992 on the Vodaphone network. 
 
A NECESSITY
Since then, text messaging has emerged as a day-to-day necessity for many people, and can now include such premium services as news and weather alerts, the downloading of custom phone screen logos, ringtones, and screensavers, and other content that may deliver daily jokes or horoscopes or announce new concert dates for selected bands or special sales of items in certain stores. 
Not surprisingly, it’s the urbanites, teens, and technophiles that have picked up on text messaging the most; recent estimates have put text messages being sent at the remarkable rate of 500 billion messages per year. 
The most frequent text messagers are found in Southeast Asia, especially Japan;  right behind are Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK, France, and America, where text messaging is quickly becoming a must-have, in spite of somewhat hefty text messaging costs (some services charge up to 10 cents a message, which adds up quickly) in contrast to places like Singapore, where hundreds of messages are allowed to be sent each
month for free.
 
INTERNET SHORTHAND
So, back to that strange language that has sprung up from the use of SMS.  Actually an abbreviated form of English that’s been adapted from Rebus, a word puzzle system that was popular with the likes of Benjamin Franklin and author Lewis Carroll, SMS Language also evolved from a similiar shorthand that’s still used in internet chatrooms. 
The aim of the system is to put across the desired words with the least amount of characters, to save time and costs within the cell phone system.  Punctuation and proper grammar are ignored for the most part, which is good for the ol’ cell phone bill and is comprehensible by most adults, but isn’t so great for the younger generations, who are inadvertantly being “programmed” in yet another form of the English language that is even further corrupted than American-English has already become. 
In this system, single letters or digits replace words (R for “are,” Y for “why,” 4 for “for,”  etc.), article words such as “the” and “a” are often omitted, and many, many other words are devolved to slang or shortened versions of themselves (such as UR for “you are.”)  Some people quietly object to this system by spelling out everything full-length on their text messages as a form of protest, but most people, citing, again, those speed and cost concerns, just end up using the abbreviations, which embeds this “new” language even further into popular culture as a bonafied communications system.
 
PHONE CHEATS
Text messaging’s influence on society is already beginning to take form.  Students at a number of colleges have been caught cheating on exams by using answers that were sent to them on their phones. 
In several cities, “SMS Alerts” are being utilized to capture thieves and pickpockets.  And everything from the good (entertainment and scavenger hunts in big cities, weather and traffic alerts for travelers, advantages over landline phones when storms take down the power) to the bad (mass firings of corporate employees, mobilizations of riots, bank fraud and suspected terror activities), to the questionable (electoral campaigning) is taking advantage of text messaging to reach people quickly and efficiently. 
But is SMS really the best way?
Last spring, an Australian museum pitted a 93-year-old telegraph operator using Morse Code against four teenagers armed with mobile phones and extensive text-messaging vocabularies. The winner? Mr. Gordon Hill, the Morse Code operator who dashed a simple message past every single teen every single time with nothing more than his Morse Code dots-and-dashes. 
SMS is working well for now - fun for most people and gaining more users by the day - but how long will it be before the SMS Language, as it’s informally called, will be ursurped by something even more efficient and compact?  With technology speeding along quicker than most can keep up, who knows what will be next - but at least for now, text messaging in its current form is here to stay.