Do we still need to use 'TXT'
Friday, 23. June 2006, 11:43:26
I was thinking; having waded through a jumbled morass of garbled characters in one wap forum post earlier: is there any point in still abbreviating to the point of incomprehensibility?
As you know, the Short Message Service (sms) was originally a method by which the Service Provider could pass instructions to a mobile via the network (your balance is.. etc.). At that time, the maximum amount of characters available was about 16 if I remember correctly, and it was therefore ESSENTIAL to abbreviate everything (gt ur txt, cuL8r and so forth)
However, these days one can utilise up to 160 characters in one text message, or 320, 480 or 640 if you're prepared to pay 20, 30 or 40p respectively. In many forum posts on wap one can use hundreds of characters, yet still people insist on using the same mangled syntax..
There are of course people who maintain 'Well, it's quicker, innit?' but they are, of course, wrong...
On a standard mobile keypad with predictive text, it takes exactly the same amount of button presses to type 'text' as it does to type 'txt' (4) and staggeringly enough (I have to admit, this suprised me) 'cuL8r' takes longer to type (15 presses) than 'see you later' (13 presses).
Hence, is it any longer relevant to use 'txt' based grammar?
WIDGETIZE