I once had the good fortune to sit opposite David Crystal at dinner (it was the night before Cambridge University gave him an honorary degree), and it was fascinating to talk to the greatest living expert on the English language. Now he’s written a splendid essay on SMS messaging which explodes some of the moral-panic myths about the subject. Excerpt:

There are several distinctive features of the way texts are written that combine to give the impression of novelty, but none of them is, in fact, linguistically novel. Many of them were being used in chatroom interactions that predated the arrival of mobile phones. Some can be found in pre-computer informal writing, dating back a hundred years or more.

The most noticeable feature is the use of single letters, numerals, and symbols to represent words or parts of words, as with b “be” and 2 “to”. They are called rebuses, and they go back centuries. Adults who condemn a “c u” in a young person’s texting have forgotten that they once did the same thing themselves (though not on a mobile phone). In countless Christmas annuals, they solved puzzles like this one:

YY U R YY U B I C U R YY 4 ME

(“Too wise you are . . .”)

Similarly, the use of initial letters for whole words (n for “no”, gf for “girlfriend”, cmb “call me back”) is not at all new. People have been initialising common phrases for ages. IOU is known from 1618. There is no difference, apart from the medium of communication, between a modern kid’s “lol” (“laughing out loud”) and an earlier generation’s “Swalk” (“sealed with a loving kiss”).

In texts we find such forms as msg (“message”) and xlnt (“excellent”). Almst any wrd cn be abbrvted in ths wy – though there is no consistency between texters. But this isn’t new either. Eric Partridge published his Dictionary of Abbreviations in 1942. It contained dozens of SMS-looking examples, such as agn “again”, mth “month”, and gd “good” – 50 years before texting was born.

English has had abbreviated words ever since it began to be written down. Words such as exam, vet, fridge, cox and bus are so familiar that they have effectively become new words. When some of these abbreviated forms first came into use, they also attracted criticism. In 1711, for example, Joseph Addison complained about the way words were being “miserably curtailed” – he mentioned pos (itive) and incog (nito). And Jonathan Swift thought that abbreviating words was a “barbarous custom”…

Great stuff. Worth reading in full.

From The Register…

Maverick mobile operator 3 UK says it’s seen a 700 per cent increase in data traffic since it launched its price-busting dongle last October. Average data throughput on the network rose to 1,400 mbit/s by February, a steep ramp from 200mbit/s when the offer was introduced.

The dongle is available to pay-as-you-go customers for £70, with 1GB for a tenner, or 3GB for £15. T-Mobile and Vodafone have followed suit with aggressive dongle deals.

3’s UK CEO Kevin Russell said it had conjured half a million customers “from nowhere”, as he gave details of the networks roadmaps for higher higher 3G speeds, and how it will share infrastructure with T-Mobile.

But we weren’t alone in wondering the aspiration of becoming the king of mobile broadband was something to wish for. Data networks don’t make money – ask a British ISP – and the new investment in fibre is coming from taxpayers or is being cross-subsidised by TV. So what’s the masterplan?

Russell told us it was all about incremental margin. He didn’t think mobile broadband was going to display fixed broadband by 2012 – a figure we plucked out of the air – and preferred to see it as a new marketplace, rather than one of substitution.

“Data becomes valuable as a leverage into increased share of the handset business,” he said. “We have a different strategy from the other four operators.”

So, give away the data and make more on handsets. It seemed rude to point out that you can walk out of a 3 Store with a dongle, but no handset.

Another reporter asked the same question, phrased differently. Nobody makes money from data – “so isn’t your business model running on empty?”

Russell said he didn’t understand the question.

Personally, I don’t much care what 3’s business model is: my 3G USB dongle has already proved a Godsend — especially since Pipex and BT began to ‘regrade’ my DSL line, thereby making it chronically erratic.