Short Message Service (SMS) is a quick and easy way to communicate short messages via mobile phones, handheld devices and, increasingly, even landlines. Commonly known as texting, SMS or even texting, the practice has spread rapidly around the world, as evidenced by the fact that 500 billion such messages were sent in the last year alone. The practice has its popularity due in large part to its convenience and cost-effectiveness. For example, a typical text message placed in the US at $0.05 per message is priced at 10-20% of the price of a voice call. Such savings have made it the most popular form of communication in many countries, and the practice is rapidly gaining popularity in the United States as well.

This rapid increase in the use of SMS by Americans is due in part to the publicity the practice received through television shows such as The American Idol, where viewers “texted” their votes for their singer Favourite. This initial exposure gave many Americans their first taste of the convenience and ease of use of SMS.

Sending text messages involves using the keyboard of a phone or other device to spell letters and then words. Then, when a message is complete, the writer sends the message, as an instant message or email, to the recipient. While some devices now have true qwerty keyboards, the vast majority of SMS-capable devices and phones simply use the 12-key number pad (0-9 plus * and #). By pressing a certain key in quick succession, different letters are formed. For example, pressing the ‘1’ key once produces the letter ‘a’. Pressing it twice gives the letter ‘b’, while pressing it three times gives ‘c’. The other numbers (2-9) work the same way, while the other keys (*, 0, and #) are generally reserved for spaces and punctuation. While texting requires some initial practice, in just a few minutes users can quickly spell and send short messages.

Most SMS services, such as those delivered to a phone, have a limit on the number of characters that can be transmitted per message. This number can vary from service to service, however many allow 140 or 160 characters. This limitation has caused users to develop what is known as Txt Speak. These are a set of commonly used abbreviations and word substitutes that not only reduce the number of characters needed to convey a word or message, but also make sending SMS or text messages an even faster and more convenient process. . For example, the number ‘4’ is commonly used to replace the word ‘for’, and ‘gr8’ replaces the word ‘great’. Some people also choose to omit the spaces between words by using capital letters instead, such as ‘TextingIsFun’ instead of ‘Texting is fun’. A relatively new phenomenon that many texting devices are now incorporating is predictive text software. This gives your phone the technology to anticipate what word you’re going to type even before you finish typing, dramatically reducing the time it takes you to text. For example, you can type the letters ‘ste’ and the software, which is built into the device, will have predicted the word ‘stereo’ for you.

SMS is a technology whose convenience and cost-effectiveness have already made it an integral part of communication in many countries. In recent years, it has been more widely advertised in the United States, and as a consequence, its popularity is rising rapidly. This growth is not surprising, however, given the many benefits that Short Message Service (SMS) brings to communication.