My Dad has just about managed to learn how to set the video recorder, he can even send text messages to me, but last week he was confused when I texted him AFAIK in reply to his text asking me if I was visiting him this Christmas. AFAIK is SMS shorthand for 'as far as I know' and there is an ever growing list of these 'text shortcuts' once only used by the hardcore propellar heads they are becoming more widely used by the rest of us.

My personal favourite is (_8^(!) which means Homer Simpson. If you tilt your head to the left you will see a pretty good likeness of the man himself. Whoever thought this up must have been a G9 (G9 is short for 'Genius' so I'm told but I don't understand why).

Much of this shorthand is simply a quick way to type in a longer phrase and fit more into your 160 characters maximum per text, but some of them express emotions such as :-( ) for Shocked and :-o zz for bored. This could be a good argument for those who claim this shorthand is degrading the english language, a pictoral statement of emotion can add to the expression of a piece of text.
OTA2U have set up a section dedicated to this topic click here to take a look. It only has a handful of translations at the moment but we are hoping it will grow and document this new language as people add their own entries.

With the event of MMS picture messaging there is a trend called 'Slebbing' where a picture of celebrities are sent as a kind of rhyming slang. If you were hungry you could send 'Hank Marvin' to show you were 'starving', or 'Britney Spears' to ask your friends 'out for beers'. If you are into 'Slebbing' then why not get in touch we would love to hear from you.

Happy texting