Txt msg marks 20th b’day
20 yrs on from the 1st txt msg, we ask #c4news Twitter and Facebook followers if uv received a txt which has changed ur life? Or do u worry about the impact of txt-speak on spelling and grammar?
The first text was sent on 3 December 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer used his computer to send the message “Merry Christmas” to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone.
Texting is now the most common form of communication in the UK with the average British person sending 50 messages per week, according to communications regulator Ofcom.
In 2011 more than 150 billion texts were sent and SMS surpassed traditional phone calls or face-to-face meetings as the most frequent way to stay in touch.
While the text is meant to be a private form of communication some high profile messages have inevitably made it into the public domain.
Read more: Texts reveal Cameron and Brooks's close relationship
It emerged at the Leveson inquiry that David Cameron sent Rebekah Brooks up to two texts a week sometimes signing off “LOL” until she explained that meant “laugh out loud” not “lots of love”.
While text messages caused some embarrassment for the prime minister, for others they have contained marriage proposals, job offers and news of imminent parenthood.
@channel4news “go somewhere quiet and call me” a text off my wife who was just about to tell me she was pregnant :-)
— Rich Skiddle (@richskiddle) December 2, 2012
Despite the joy text messages can bring there are concerns that so called “text-speak” has had a negative impact on people’s spelling and grammar.
@mirandaprguru contacted #c4news on Twitter to say we should include “How text ruined the sentence/relationship” in our report.
But a study published earlier this year by Coventry University found that text-speak does not damage a child’s understanding of written or spoken grammar.
Professor Clare Wood who led the research team said: “We found no evidence of a link between poor adherence to grammatical convention when texting and children’s general grammatical understanding.
“Therefore there is no reason to assume that because children play with the representation of written language when they are texting that this will somehow damage or undermine their appreciation of standard grammar over time.”
She added: “In fact our study has shown that for both children and adults, grammatical violations are not a consistent feature of texting behavior. The amount of errors people make in their text messages appears to change over time.”
