On English changing: true dat.
(Damn, that was hard for an old-school teacher to type)
On ellipses: I try hard to write the way I speak. So if there’s a pause, or a word that’s drawn out or slowed down, I try to replicate that.
Agreed. But … Here’s something to consider …
txtspk (sic) started when those darn kids were using T9 to input words into their flip phones using the traditional 12-key telephone keypad.
Then we all got smart(er) phones with full QWERTY keyboards, be they physical or nowadays on-screen. And Swype and their ilk to make it even easier. And high(er) quality prediction models such that for many texts I send I’m just clicking the next suggested word 4 times for 5.
And now we’re getting to txts entered via speech-to-text recognition. With currently rocky word recognition, but potentially much better spelling.
My point is that in the roughly 25 years (!) since SMS technology went mainstream, a lot has changed in how we input. Aside: Whether the message is transmitted via SMS, iMessage, snapchat, etc., is immaterial to this discussion. That part of the tech stack doesn’t matter.
The extreme abbreviating, and the in-group teen-speak are both unnecessary now. I believe a comparative analysis of a corpus of 2000-era messages vs 2020-era messages would show that txting English has migrated back towards “normal” English. Not all the way but some. I further predict that same movement will continue in the future.
I write texts almost like I write my emails, using full sentences, correct spelling, and normal casing and punctuation. I do write more imperatively and strive for shorter punchier sentences. I leave out parenthetical thoughts, background info, etc. Mostly because if those are necessary, then txt isn’t the right medium for the job.
Overall, English in whichever written form, is getting less formal, less decorated, and more “sloppy” for lack of a less value-loaded term. All of which is simply a result of the democratization of writing.
How many words of prose did the typical adult high school drop-out commit to paper in 1970? How many words of prose does the typical adult high school drop-out commit to paper + txt + email + TwitFace + … here in 2021? A crap-ton more.
Written English (in any medium) is whatever most writers make it out to be in that medium. With no disrespect meant to @digs, retired English teachers are badly outnumbered here and doomed to lose.
I tend to disagree. Writing and speaking are two different forms of communication and there’s no reason why they need to use the same set of rules.
If I’m writing and I pause while I think of the word or phrase I feel will best communicate my message, there’s no reason why I need to include that pause in the message unless the pause itself is part of the message.
BTW: I really wish I had a better way than Character Map to enter Unicode characters. Every search I’ve done on how I could do it keeps regurgitating the same non-helpful answers:
- Use Alt+ keypad, which is fine for the Ascii/Ansi characters but nothing else;
- Directions which work in MS Office apps like Word and Excel, but not online using Chrome;
- Install various third-party apps to support Unicode entry, which I don’t want to have to do.
Which Unicode characters do you want?
There are some decent workarounds that work more or less well depending on whether you want a-umlaut or the poo emoji or some Chinese ideograms or what.
None are as easy as having a dedicated key on on your keyboard though. If you’re not willing to be pointing, clicking, copying, pasting, etc., you’re left with an app or memorized Alt-codes.
Most things in language are unnecessary. Slang is unnecessary but it is used is a signal that you are part of “the group,” whatever group it is that you want to be part of. Same idea for how people text. People don’t use LOL solely because they can’t be bothered to type “Ha ha!”
I am not trying to argue what people should do, I am describing how people actually text. Young people do not text like that, and so I am going to guess you are over 25 and quite possibly over 50.
I agree that the tech stack doesn’t matter. The point of texting is brief, instant, asynchronous communication, and that leads to a great economy of expression compared to other written forms. (I would probably put tweets in a similar category.)
I could do Alt codes except that doesn’t seem to support all Unicode codes, just the ASCII/ANSI subset I mentioned.
I text (and google chat, and slack) with a lot of people in their late 20s and 30s. They use full sentences and spell words the way any English teacher would want them to. Their texts do differ from emails in that typically each sentence is sent on its own. Final periods are often omitted. (being replaced with the “send” button.) But not always. I don’t see any obvious pattern as to when they are used.
It’s interesting. I’m looking back through my texts, and it seems when I’m having a long conversation, like from my computer instead of my phone, I have multi sentence texts and almost always end with a period. One liners are generally, but not always, delivered without one. And I do use ellipses. Like I’m looking at my texts with my wife, and almost none of those have periods from either of us. They even contain the controversial-among-some “k” for “okay.”
With my other friends, I do use periods. I generally capitalize, but not always – it depends on who I’m talking to. I tend to use “haha” instead of “lol.” It does appear I vary my text style depending on the audience. With some I always capitalize; with others I almost never capitalize. And sometimes it’s just based on my mood that day or, probably more importantly, which device I’m texting from.
Texting dialect is fascinating to me and I wonder if any linguist has done a “grammar” of text speak or something akin to that. I’m sure someone must have by now – it’s such an obvious field. And it’s pretty cool.
There used to be a program that a Danish guy, tired of using CharMap for his diacriticals, wrote. It would lurk in the background and let you press and release Ctrl, then a two-character code would put in the special character. `a for à as an example or ,c for ç Even =e for € and -l for £ – that’s an L.
Alas, it stopped working with the introduction of Win10. I checked a year after it was introduced and still no joy. I don’t even remember the name, now.
I sent that link to my son and DIL, asking if I needed to update my texting style. They wrote back:
follow your heart
I understand that with Japanese one speaks VERY differently to different people depending on the setting and your relative social status.
Wow. Hope for the future blooms within my soul.
By the way, here’s proof I’m old: my kids laugh at me when I pause before I hit send on a text so that I can proof it (and usually correct my punctuation).
Here’s a page Alt Codes showing all the symbols you can get with the standard Windows Alt-key, 1-0255. (Many three-digit numbers are different depending on whether you prefix a zero or not). Beyond that higher numbers just wrap around to repeat the same set since Alt-keypad doesn’t recognize more than eight bits. It includes the most common diacritical letters. But full keyboard support for Unicode seems to be something Windows needs to include in the next version.
ETA: … Oh! Ellipsis is an Alt-key option , 0133. How’d I miss that? Okay, I have that at least. But my lament for the rest of Unicode still stands. …
DU-uuh.
DUMB-ME
DUHM-MEE.
A way I’d previously tried to implement Unicode via Alt-keypad DOES work- provided you actually use the plus key on the keypad 
⚳:aries:
okay, works, except for codes requiring letters reserved for Alt-functions.
Per this site, may require editing a register setting. How to enter Unicode characters in Microsoft Windows
Please forgive this extended hijack; I’ll go play around with it elsewhere. We now resume our thread about text messaging etiquette.
If the software shifts two hyphens into an em dash, then yes. Apparently this software doesn’t. So here I’d be lazy and just use hyphens.
For showing that I’m drawing out a word, I generally just draw out the word. As in, okaaaaay.
Am I the only one who thinks that the new ‘because’ that means “I’m leaving out most of a sentence or two” should be used with a colon? Because: reasons.
ISTM if you’re going to insert a colon after “because”, you’ll want it there whether you’ve included or elided the details. Whatever else a colon might be, an elision indicator ain’t it.
But that was only one ellipsis…
Correct. And it is extremely annoying that Discourse won’t let me do this correctly.
If I were a wizard, I would absolutely forbid my familiar to send email.
… As well as in the actual post.
I’ve never sent a text. I know my phone can receive them, because I get them every now and then from my wife and kids, but I haven’t bothered learning how to send them. (I also haven’t bothered learning how to use the camera, which I didn’t want in the first place.)
You might as well learn how. It’s trivially easy, even on my ancient not-very-smart-at-all cell phone.
I work mostly on a MacBook laptop. There’s no numeric keypad for doing Alt+ddd codes. But I’ve noticed that a variety of commonly-used characters are easily obtained. First, most letters, when held down, don’t repeat. Instead, when you hold a letter down, you get a pop-up menu of variations on that letter, most with the various accents. For example, if I hold down the e key, I get a menu with è é ê ë ē ė ę
Second, holding the option key down plus another key gets a whole variety of other characters, including Greek and various special goodies.