Punctuation, or Lack Thereof
While vowels and punctuation of words in SMS language are generally omitted, David Crystal observes that apostrophes occur unusually frequently. He cites an American study of 544 messages, where occurrence of apostrophes in SMS language is approximately 35 percent. This is unexpected, seeing that it is a hassle to input an apostrophe in a text message with the multiple steps involved. Interestingly, the use of apostrophes cannot be totally attributed to users attempting to disambiguate words that might otherwise be misunderstood without it.
There are not that many cases in English where leaving out the apostrophe causes misunderstanding of the message. For example, "we’re" without the apostrophe could be misread as "were". Even so, these are mostly understood correctly despite being ambiguous, as readers can rely on other cues such as part of sentence and context where the word appears to decide what the word should be. For many other words like "Im" and "Shes", there is no ambiguity. Since it is not imperative that users use apostrophes to ensure that their message is understood accurately, this phenonenon may in part be atttributed to texters wanting to maintain clarity so that the message can be more easily understood in a shorter amount of time.
Read more about this topic: SMS Language, Linguistic Properties and Style
Famous quotes containing the words lack and/or thereof:
“I never meet anyone nowadays who admits to having had a happy childhood. Everyone appears to think happiness betokens a lack of sensitivity.”
—Jessamyn West (19071984)
“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”
—Bible: Hebrew Song of Solomon, 8:6.