11/11/2022 0 Comments Text speek![]() ![]() Some texters refuse to depart at all from traditional orthography. As older and more conservative language users have begun to text, an even more standardised style has appeared. Many texters alter just the grammatical words (such as "you" and "be"). When messages are longer, containing more information, the amount of standard orthography increases. There is no point in paying to send a message if it breaks so many rules that it ceases to be intelligible. It is not a disaster.Īlthough many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. That's more than three times as much as all Hollywood box office returns that year. Text messaging generated around $70bn in 2005. World figures went from 17bn in 2000 to 250bn in 2001. On Christmas Day alone in 2006, over 205m texts went out. This had doubled by 2004, and was forecast to be 45bn in 2007. In the UK, in 2001, 12.2bn text messages were sent. But once procedures were in place, texting rocketed. The slow start, it seems, was because the companies had trouble working out reliable ways of charging for the new service. The average number of texts per GSM customer in 1995 was 0.4 per month by the end of 2000 it was still only 35. It took five years or more before numbers of users started to build up. ![]() Text communicated by pagers were replaced by text messages, at first only 20 characters in length. The idea of a point-to-point short message service (or SMS) began to be discussed as part of the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications network in the mid-1980s, but it wasn't until the early 90s that phone companies started to develop its commercial possibilities. Less than a decade ago, hardly anyone had heard of it. ![]() But has there ever been a linguistic phenomenon that has aroused such curiosity, suspicion, fear, confusion, antagonism, fascination, excitement and enthusiasm all at once as texting? And in such a short space of time. Scares accompanied the introduction of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcasting. Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language. ![]()
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