BYTE MARKS
Here's some help for transl8ing txt msgz
By Burt Lum
Short message service (SMS), text messaging lingo and emoticons still have me fascinated. Yes, I know you can take a picture of your favorite girl friend or boy friend with your wireless phone and send it to someone over the Internet, but text will always play a primary role in communicating. Whether it is over your phone, computer or personal digital assistant, text is evolving and taking new shape.
In the case of the English alphabet, we basically have 26 letters, 10 numeric symbols and an assortment of punctuation marks. We have thousands of words committed to memory and have practically mastered the art of constructing a decent sentence. But people have a penchant for abbreviations. So communicating with SMS, instant messaging and chat, we have created new ways of using alphanumeric characters. Driven by a desire to reduce keystrokes and communicate quickly, this text lingo is capturing the imagination of a whole new generation of computer users.
Keeping up can be challenging, like learning a new language. Simple examples of the new text lingo have already crept into our everyday use, like brb (be right back), btw (by the way) or lol (laugh out loud). It gets more complicated with acronyms like rotfl (rolling on the floor laughing), ruok (are you OK?), or fbks (failure between keyboard and seat). Text lingo and emoticons are evolving just a rapidly. Take for example, l8ter, or 1fs (one finger salute). And there is the emoticons, like :-p~ (heavy smoker) or >:-> (very mischievous devil).
To keep up with this new language, let me recommend a couple of good resources. For an extensive list of emoticons, go to www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/emoticons.html. You will also find a fairly lengthy list of acronyms and text lingo at www.lingo2word.com. In no time, you will be putting whole sentences together. If you receive something you can't quite translate www.transl8it.com will help. The transl8it site will translate to and from text lingo to English. This is almost like pidgin for computers. Wel datz it 4 me, Im pau 4 nw. ;-)
Burt Lum is a click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
