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Talking About Texting

Just 15 years ago hardly anyone had a cellphone ... now almost EVERYONE's got one. And, beyond just talking, people are texting on the go. Here's Kidzworld's guide to sending text messages without having to type out every single word!

Periodic Table of Texting

All About Acronyms

An acronym is a made-up word where each letter stands for the first letter of another word. For example, LOL stands for Laugh Out Loud. That's an acronym EVERYONE knows about nowadays. In fact, there are lots of acronyms we should all know by heart, since they help make texting so much faster and easier:

AKA: Also Known As
ASAP: As Soon As Possible
BFF: Best Friends Forever
BRB: Be Right Back
BTW: By The Way
IDK: I Don’t Know
ILY: I Love You
IMHO: In My Honest/Humble Opinion
IMO: In My Opinion
JK: Just Kidding
NP: No Problem
ROFL: Rolling On Floor Laughing
TTYL: Talk To You Later

Sometimes acronyms use numbers in place of letters, or letters that stand for the shortcut for another word (like U for "YOU"):

B4: Before
B4N: Bye For Now
CUL: See You Later
RU: Are You
UR: You Are

The Long & Short Of It

Rather than typing out an entire word, there are lots of ways to shorten common words – for example, replacing a letter with a number, dropping a vowel here and there or combining two words together to make one – and still get your meaning across on your phone:

2day: Today
2morro: Tomorrow
Gonna: Going to
Gr8: Great
Thx: Thank you
Wanna: Want to

E-mazing Emoticons

The great thing about texting is there are lots of ways to express your feeling without saying – or typing – a single word! Emoticons are “faces” that you make out of letters, numbers and different symbols, like:

:-) = happy
:-( = sad
;-) = wink
:’-( = crying
:-p = tongue sticking out
8-) = wearing glasses
:-D = very happy

Most phones have actual simley/frowny faces on them (you know, , , , ), so you don’t really need to type it all out like we did above. But it’s fun to think up new emoticons anyway, like:

@@@:-) = Marge Simpson

HAVE YOUR SAY: We OBV (obviously) can't list ALL the best texting shortcuts here, so start adding YOUR fave texting terms by leaving a comment below this story. Let's build a complete guide together!