One of the information age's biggest successes has celebrated its 20th birthday. The very 1 simple text message was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by software engineer Neil Papworth to his boss at the British mobile phone operator Vodafone. It 2simply “Merry Christmas”. Little did they know that their humble mode of communication would take the world by 3. SMS (short message service) is today a multi-billion-dollar industry covering every corner of the globe. An estimated nine trillion text messages are sent globally each year. Everyone from presidents to schoolchildren and villagers in 4 parts of developing countries relies on it to communicate.
SMS is now an integral part of daily life for most of us. It is the preferred method of communication between family members. However, SMS has also been blamed for a decline in language ability and an increase in traffic accidents. A new sub-language has spread worldwide as texters find shortcuts to write their messages as quickly as possible using the fewest possible characters. Texting 5 such as LOL (laugh out loud) and OMG (oh my god) has even entered the Oxford English Dictionary.