“Merry Christmas” was the very first text message ever sent, on December 3rd, 1992, by British engineer Neil Papworth to his pal Richard Jarvis. His greeting never received a response. To be fair, Jarvis didn’t have a cell phone to text back with, but in today’s world, there’s a lot one could analyze from that simple two-word conversation. For starters, the lack of an exclamation mark could mean the initial texter wasn’t actually excited to wish his friend a merry Christmas. And leaving him “on read”? Absolutely outrageous in this society!
This is the language of the new generation, both written, and at times, ill-advisedly, spoken. Barely two decades old, texting already plays a huge role in the cultural norms of communication today. In fact, its hidden set of rules violates many standard codes of writing—from grammar to spelling and even definitions of words. At the same time, we have never scrutinized more obsessively over spelling, grammar, and the context of word usage. Even something as simple as capitalizing can transform the meaning of a text. I find myself tacking on all lowercase “lol”s to friendly jabs because of how easily people take offense to jokes when there’s not a real person there to signify that it’s “just a joke.”
How friendly your messages are also matters. A meme on Instagram expressed this perfectly with a quick diagram to help decode the various spellings of “hi.” Hi with one “i” is standard. Hii is a typo. Hiii means a person is excited to text you. Hiiii means they’re probably into you. But Hiiiiiii? That’s 100 percent a serial murderer. Reading this sounds ridiculous, but several users commented relating all too well to the few seconds between deleting, then adding an extra “i” or two (or five!) to the word before hitting “send.”
Part of the difficulty in keeping up with the norms of texting is the unclear, subjective etiquette everyone follows. Save for the Grammar Rules For Texts and Instant Messages on Dummies.com or The Urban Dictionary’s dirty definitions for any possible word, there seems to be no other guide for the novices in the arena. Yet, many of the rules that are observed universally are rarely laid out.
Proper grammar means you’re too professional, while bad grammar gives off a friendly, casual vibe. Ending with “LOL” and “haha” tones down a heated conversation. Adding too many letters at the end of words could add a flirty lilt to the conversation. A period at the end of a sentence denotes anger while two periods indicate annoyance or confusion. In fact, Mariama Badjie, a 22-year-old student in New York, says, “Periods are worse than exclamation points.” Although several people like her believe exclamation points are unnecessary, others are calling for more. The writer Madeleine Aggeler suggests an exclamation mark is a make-or-break baseline for her emotions attached to a conversation. In her article “More Exclamation Points Please!!!!!” for The Cut, she writes that while a “hi” feels short and blunt with associated anxiety over bad news, a “hi!” with an exclamation mark starts off the conversation on a good note and has the power to soften bad news.
Moreover, with texting so focused on the actual, literal message, we have to think a lot more to make sure we only write socially acceptable texts. Social media has already made judging others very easy. There’s anonymity on the internet, with second accounts under fake names, that makes it so much more easier to publicly express our unfiltered thoughts. But on platforms where our real identities are attached to our words, we subconsciously scrutinize our own messages and the messages we receive. Because of this, gender roles are only being further enforced, especially in the professional world. Christina Lacerenza, assistant professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Colorado-Boulder, found in her study, The Influence of Textual Cues on First Impressions of an Email Sender, that men and women should consider using distinct salutations depending on their intentions. “It is more important for women to avoid utilizing the salutation ‘Thanks!’ if they are attempting to be perceived as professional,” she writes.
Emojis and memes have also entered our conversations to make life a little more expressive. In a text, Effat Jabeen, a doctor based in New Jersey, said that she has stopped using words and heavily relies on emojis to get messages across. True to her word, she ended that message to me with a shrugging emoji. In fact, many people can have entire conversations with just emojis. And memes take it to a whole other level. To think that after advancing so far in language we’re reverting right back to hieroglyphics! Despite that, memes and emojis have given us a new channel of expressing emotions and feelings that are difficult to articulate. While it does seem to be a godsend when texting, Jabeen worries that it is hurting how we communicate in person.
Nevertheless, reading between the lines has never been more important. Pages like Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo Answers overflow with requests to help decode simple looking texts. In fact, Reddit has a subreddit called HowDoIRespondToThis dedicated to helping people in awkward texting situations. This is one of the many friendly requests for advice:
“After texting someone ‘Goodnight’ should you acknowledge any responses or should you just go to bed?”
Other questions are more scenario-based, like:
“I saw a Tinder girl I haven’t talked to since 2015 (that I had a lot in common with) looked at one of my Snapchat stories recently. Thinking of texting her. Is that weird? Any other way I can text her? I really want to talk to her.”
Questions like these are everywhere. No one really knows the way, but through trial and error, we help each other through uncertain situations and, to be fair, this exchange of advice might not look all too foreign to most of us. We’ve all done it at some point or another—sent friends screenshots of a risky conversation, decoding it, and then having debates over the right combination of incorrect grammar, spelling, and acronyms working together to formulate the perfect response. This almost clique-like nature of these “laws” is largely another reason no one truly knows all the right ways to communicate via texting. There is no grammar book, no Encyclopedia or Merriam-Webster Dictionary, that everyone potentially agrees with.
While all these ideas maintain their role in this new era of communication, we’re still the ones who make the choice of following through with it. Aroob Khan, a 21-year-old psychology major, says she doesn’t want to comply with these standards because she doesn’t like the idea of being hyper-aware of her tone for simple texts like thank you and sorry. “I don’t want people to ponder on what I mean when I say certain things or include or remove punctuation,” Khan says.
When Papworth sent that first “Merry Christmas” text, he had no idea of how messaging would develop into what it is today. And despite how this new language is fundamentally changing how we communicate, Mariama Badjie believes that “texting is the best thing that has happened to us.” These changes may be new and confusing and sometimes uncomfortable, they represent a more advanced society. Maybe one day there will be a such thing as a Texting Encyclopedia. And if one ever does exist, one thing is for sure: it will never stop evolving.
