The Importance Of Texting

Over the past few decades, the popularity of mobile phones has exploded and the development of text messaging has followed close behind. With so many people utilizing the new technology, the world of writing was primed for a new style to take shape. Software and hardware limitations of writing messages on cellphones prompted texters to stray away from typical writing rules and create a whole new type of writing. As far back as the 19th century, people have been sending electronic messages in the form of telegrams (Bellis). Telegraphs were the technology behind sending written messages electrically until the mobile phone started to become developed in the second half of the 20th century. Cell phones were in very high demand, even with the very …show more content…

The limitations in the hardware and the number of characters has led to the use of a variety of shortcuts. Texters quickly realized that consonants were much better at identifying a word than vowels, which led to shortening word like “emrgncy” and “dictionary.” Emoticons became popular as a new way to use the idea of rebuses. While rebuses had only been used as riddles where the object was to translate a series of pictures into a message, they had now found a new use as a short, simple way to communicate tone and emotion without the freedom of limitless characters or tone of voice (Crystal). Not only do these techniques increase how much information someone can pack into 160 characters, they also make conversations snappier and more responsive. The conversational nature of phone calls translates directly to SMS messaging. Phone calls tend to be more colloquial and casual so people more readily stray from the rules of typical writing when texting. If texting was seen as formal and professional, people would never have invented terms like “lol” or “ttyl” (Crystal). Instead, it is seen as a way to talk to friends. Keeping to strict grammatical rules doesn’t matter when just talking to a friend. In the same way that people use slang when talking to each other, they use abbreviations or shortenings when texting each other. This is also part of the reason why textspeak is most likely going to stay limited to