# Explain texting to me **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 2, 2008, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609 "2008-04-02T00:48:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/41 "2008-04-03T07:12:36Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] My phone sure doesn’t, and though it’s an older Nokia model, I’ve only had it for a couple of years. [/QUOTE] What model is it? Even a picture of it if you don’t know will do. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/42 "2008-04-03T16:40:15Z")
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer] What model is it? Even a picture of it if you don’t know will do. [/QUOTE] I looked for a while but couldn’t find a picture of my phone (and there’s nothing on the phone itself that I can tell). But it does look similar to the [1110](http://www.welectronics.com/gsm/Nokia/nokia-1110.jpg) and [1112](http://www.zamazing.org/imaj/abacus/nokia-1112.jpg), though not as nice. Mine, for example, doesn’t have a left/right option in that central button, just up/down. Also, most of my numbers share a single elongated button on the keypad: 1 & 3, 2 & 5, 4 & 6, 8 & 0. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/43 "2008-04-03T16:58:16Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] I looked for a while but couldn’t find a picture of my phone (and there’s nothing on the phone itself that I can tell). But it does look similar to the [1110](http://www.welectronics.com/gsm/Nokia/nokia-1110.jpg) and [1112](http://www.zamazing.org/imaj/abacus/nokia-1112.jpg), though not as nice. Mine, for example, doesn’t have a left/right option in that central button, just up/down. Also, most of my numbers share a single elongated button on the keypad: 1 & 3, 2 & 5, 4 & 6, 8 & 0. [/QUOTE] Look under the battery. Nokia hides their model numbers there. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/44 "2008-04-03T17:32:38Z")
I’m gonna go out on a limb after a little hunting and suggest that it’s this one, the [Nokia 3595](http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=266) (if not, then probably this one, [the 3560](http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=249)). If it _is_ that one, then it does indeed have predictive text entry. To turn in on, you need to be in the message editing screen. Hit the # key to cycle through input modes – Sentence caps, ALL CAPS, lowercase, Predictive sentence caps, predictive lowercase. As you hit the # key, there’s an indicator on the upper right that will change. Sentence caps: Abc ALL CAPS: ABC lowercase: abc Predictive sentence caps: \_\_Abc predictive lowercase: \_\_abc The underline is actually a double underline with a little pencil symbol after it, but I can’t do that in vBulletin. Also, it’s not really _that_ old – FCC approval came in March 2003, which means it was released 2 or 3Q that year. Nokia’s support page for the phone is [here](http://www.nokiausa.com/A4410660), and the user’s guide is available on that page. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/45 "2008-04-03T18:50:25Z")
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer] I’m gonna go out on a limb after a little hunting and suggest that it’s this one, the [Nokia 3595](http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=266) . [/QUOTE] Yes, this looks exactly like mine. 🙂 I’ll give your solution a try. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![svrider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@svrider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svrider)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/46 "2008-04-03T19:02:22Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] I wasn’t assuming that included received messages, since the comment said the daughter (and her friends) send over 10,000 messages a month. I assumed this meant they each send 10,000 messages, not together. So, anyhow, 20 an hour or 40 an hour. It just seems astronomically high to me. I _know_ people do it–I just don’t know how it’s possible without dedicating half your life to texting. [/QUOTE] One text message can have more than one recipient, you could type in a few seconds and send to everyone of you contacts and trust me, teens have many of those 🙂 I work for a mobile network provider that offers unlimited sms and mms messages and we certainly have customers that send more that 10.000 messages per month. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/47 "2008-04-16T19:02:15Z")
OK, I tried the predictive text thing on my phone and in one word: HorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorrible :mad: It would come up with a word (inevitable the wrong one) after inputting one letter, but I couldn’t clear the wrong letter without clearing the letter I inputted as well. Essentially, I couldn’t find a way to edit or correct the “predicted” text, and it very quickly became an unbelievalbe PITA. So F that! Also, I tried the dialing-5-digit-code thing for the first time today, and got this message back: > [@](#): > > Access denied. Sorry, this service is not enabled for your service plan. Now, I don’t know if it’s because of my provider, my plan, or what (and I don’t really care), but I find it really curious that something as simple as texting what one assumes is a universally accepted 5-digit code won’t actually work for some phones/plans/services. Can you imagine announcing a phone # to call and not having that # be accepted by any phone that has basic long distance service? All in all, the whole thing still strikes me as weird (in an admittedly old-fogey kind of way). ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/48 "2008-04-16T19:09:01Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] OK, I tried the predictive text thing on my phone and in one word: HorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorribleHorrible :mad: It would come up with a word (inevitable the wrong one) after inputting one letter, but I couldn’t clear the wrong letter without clearing the letter I inputted as well. Essentially, I couldn’t find a way to edit or correct the “predicted” text, and it very quickly became an unbelievalbe PITA. So F that! [/QUOTE] If it guesses the wrong word, you keep inputting letters in your word until you run out of letters or it guesses correctly. If you run out of letters, you can cycle though additional guesses the phone has made until you come across the right one (hopefully). ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Sensitive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58956e/32.png) [@Darth\_Sensitive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Sensitive)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/49 "2008-04-16T19:11:41Z")
You keep going on predictive text: so if you want ‘chicken’, you press the following sequence and it gives you \_\_\_ on my phone 2 - A 4 - Ah 4 - Big 2 - Chic 5 - Chick 3 - Chicke 6 - Chicken And if the word you want isn’t what you guess, you can cycle through the list, or input it the hard way and it will remember. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/50 "2008-04-16T19:39:07Z")
I’ve sent fewer than 5 texts in my life, and all but one were to my husband. He’ll call me at work and I’ll text back: \*Conference call \* so he’ll know I can’t take his call or call him back right then. If it didn’t cost us a quarter for sending and receiving each text, we’d do it a lot more. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/51 "2008-04-16T21:00:06Z")
[QUOTE=aktep] If it guesses the wrong word, you keep inputting letters in your word until you run out of letters or it guesses correctly. If you run out of letters, you can cycle though additional guesses the phone has made until you come across the right one (hopefully). [/QUOTE] Yeah, you really shouldn’t think of predictive text as predicting each individual letter. That would be kind of silly, because the first letter would be wrong approximately two out of three times, and you’d be scrolling through the letters anyway, completely negating the whole purpose of predictive text. Instead, as has been explained, type in the whole word by number, _then_ look at the screen to see what it’s predicted and, if it’s wrong, (for example, the words “good” and “home” have the same digit sequence-4663), press up or down on the directional pad of most forms, at it will go through the most popular words. You can get quite fast using predictive text, 30-40+ wpm. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/52 "2008-04-17T04:28:38Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] Yeah, you really shouldn’t think of predictive text as predicting each individual letter. That would be kind of silly, because the first letter would be wrong approximately two out of three times, and you’d be scrolling through the letters anyway, completely negating the whole purpose of predictive text. Instead, as has been explained, type in the whole word by number, _then_ look at the screen to see what it’s predicted and, if it’s wrong, (for example, the words “good” and “home” have the same digit sequence-4663), press up or down on the directional pad of most forms, at it will go through the most popular words. You can get quite fast using predictive text, 30-40+ wpm. [/QUOTE] This is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be taught, or even better, shown, to those of us in circles where nobody does text messaging, so we can see how the heck it is done. Ed ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/53 "2008-04-17T14:38:44Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] I often text when it’s something short and I’m in a noisy environment such as a bus, where talking would be difficult. Plus, the recipient isn’t interrupted as much. [/QUOTE] We do this alot at work too especially since customers who have onsite techs working onsite seem far less miffed about us glancing at our phone for 5 sec as opposed to answering the phone. It can also be used very very effectively for dispatching situations. Dropping a cust name, addy, phone, and nutshell version of the problem works very very well. ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/54 "2008-04-17T18:24:10Z")
There are some very handy uses for text messaging. Two examples: a directory enquiries service that sends you the result of your search as a text message, so you can dial the number from the message (my phone, and I’m sure many others, recognises the number in the message as a phone number and makes it ‘dial-able’); secondly, the UK national rail enquiries service, where you text the name of two stations to a short code number and it gives you a list of the next ten trains between those stations and whethe they’re early, on time or late. ---
**Author:** ![Santo\_Rugger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Santo\_Rugger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santo_Rugger)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/55 "2008-04-17T19:03:58Z")
A directory service \*\*Crusoe \*\*mentions can be accessed in the US by texting a business name to “46645” (googl), and getting its address and “dial-able” number. It’s free, but you have to pay for the texts. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/56 "2008-04-17T20:24:15Z")
[QUOTE=Crusoe] There are some very handy uses for text messaging. [/QUOTE] I have my Mastercard hooked up to text me whenever something happens, like an unexpected charge against it. It will also alert me when a charge is attempted and fails due to not enough money. Since it is a prepaid card, and I only load it when I have specific plans for the money, an unexpected charge can be a problem. One time, too, I got an expected charge from a company for approximately five times the expected amount. It didn’t go through, but I was able to contact then and request an explanation even though I was a long way from a computer and couldn’t check my online transaction record. ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/57 "2008-04-17T21:11:22Z")
Oh, that reminds me - I also get texts from my bank. Once a week I get the balance, and I get a text for any deposit or withdrawal over £200 (I specified the amount). ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2008, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/58 "2008-04-17T22:32:03Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] Like the OP, I’m clueless about this stuff. Can you do the opposite, use your email program to text someone if you have their texting-address? [/QUOTE] Every carrier has a different domain, but yes this is quite common. T-Mobile, for example, is [10 digit number]@tmomail.net without the brackets, of course. If you compose an email and send to that address it will come in as a text message. On almost all new phones a message longer than 160 char (SMS limit) will be bridged together automatically by the phone and appear as one long message so there’s no worries about a friend getting fifty individual beeps as one long email comes in. I’m sure people with other carriers can probably shed some light on the domains their companies use for this function. ---
**Author:** ![bufftabby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/77aa72/32.png) [@bufftabby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bufftabby)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2008, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609/59 "2008-04-18T05:37:54Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] But how does texting work for those 5-digit numbers? Do you just dial those 5 numbers and then hit Send? Aren’t there are a more finite number of possible combinations available on a nationwide level for just 5 numbers? [/QUOTE] BEWARE THE 5-DIGIT SHORT CODES! I’m sorry I had to shout, but this is very important. You may want to forbid your children from using them, they’re that dangerous. Here’s why: many of those codes will result in recurring charges on your phone bill of $9.99 or more apiece. Sure, that “joke of the day” sounds great until you find out it cost you a dollar each day, or something equally ridiculous. Just be _extremely_cautious, because most of these short codes are designed to directly make money from you via exorbitant charges on your wireless bill. I’m sure there are legitimate ones, such as the Google one, but those are certainly not prevalent. A thought: someone mentioned that they had tried to send one, but it didn’t go through. Some wireless providers limit the maximum amount that can be charged by a single transaction, so perhaps the charge for that exceeded that limit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-texting-to-me/443609.md?page=2)