oomis1105: you are so full of yourself and hypocritical. because you have to read and reread a text message to understand it, the younger generation does. sorry, but a message board is not letter writing. the reason text messaging is short bursts, and tends to have words abbreviated or slang usage is because of 2 simple reasons. 1. it helps, because until recently most phones did not have QWERTY keyboards. 2. text messaging is SMS. SMS allows only for 160 characters, including spaces, so this type of writing was needed. funny you should say that message boards are more like writing a letter, those abbreviations and slang you see, it comes from message boards. it has become more uses in SMS texting because of character constraints, but outside of “yeshiva world” when you go to more techno savvy boards, ones used for technology especially, abbreviations are all over the place. (some are very off-color.) email would be more like letter writing. message board posting is more like putting a message on a bulletin board in a college, hence the early term for message boards, “bulletin boards”. as for the emoticons, girls especially have been using smiley faces and frowns in their letters and cards for decades. as far as texting not having any deep thought involved, that is simple as well, the question usually isnt very deep either. you again only have 160 characters, so usually its a question about fact, as if are we going to lunch, or what do you want to eat, or did you hear about what that person did, etc. no one has deep conversations on text messaging, it would take for ever. teens gossip, and that may go on and on for hours, but it isn’t deep and thought provoking. you may not be able to tell from the message the tone, so that is why emoticons are used. saying they are not withstanding would be like saying without punctuation withstanding, i can never understand any book i pick up, because its just words written in a funny order. emoticons are used for that exact reason, to let the reader know the intent. in a way it is the punctuation mark of texting.
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