Text messaging is destroying our ability to communicate. Every minute of every day young people across the U.S. are finding new ways to abbreviate common expressions and words. Text messaging is slowly eating away at the beauty of the English language. Gone are the days of letter writing or even long emails. In the interest of speed, text messaging is encouraging people to transmit their thoughts with strange combinations of letters strung together with no punctuation, grammar or even separation. Below is a sample of how text messaging is creating its own vocabulary, one that ignores all the rules your 5th grade English teacher pounded into your head.

Common text messaging shortcuts:
Anything - NTHING
Are you OK - RUOK?
Are - R
Ate - 8
Be - B
Before - B4
Be seeing you - BCNU
Cutie - QT
Date - D8
Dinner - DNR
Easy - EZ
Eh? - A?
Excellent - XLNT
Fate - F8
For - 4
For your information - FYI
Great - GR8
Late - L8
Later - L8R
Lots of love/laughs - Lol
Love - LUV
Mate - M8
Please - PLS
Please call me - PCM
Queue/cue - Q
Rate - R8
See/sea - C
See you later - CU L8R
Speak - SPK
Tea - T
Thanks - THX
Thank you - THNQ
To/too - 2
To be - 2B
Today - 2DAY
Tomorrow - 2MORO
Want to - WAN2
What - WOT
Work - WRK
Why - Y
You - U

There are now entire websites dedicated to helping people decipher text messaging lingo. With the proliferation of text messaging and endless abbreviations, how can we expect our young people to converse professionally. We are encouraging an entire population of poor communicators with limited vocabularies. With no end in sight, our only hope is to remind those we can of the beauty of the written word and the power of the English language.