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"I&amp;#039;m probably the last person on the planet who doesn&amp;#039;t send text messages from my cell phone. What am I missing? You can communicate spontaneously while on the go. Since the message is typed, there are no ringing phones to disturb others. And like an e-mail, texting does not require an immediate response. Text messages are short, concise, and don&amp;#039;t waste anyone&amp;#039;s time. They give you a written record, so they&amp;#039;re great for things like driving directions, addresses, and instructions. But nobody uses texting to send long messages.  How do you send a text message? With most cell phones there&amp;#039;s an option on the main menu with functions to create and receive messages. You type in the recipient&amp;#039;s phone number, and then the message, which you can do in one of two ways. The old way, called multi-tap, is to use the letters on your keypad numbers. But that can be clumsy and slow. Most phones offer a much faster method, usually called T9, or predictive text. That system figures out what word you meant, based on past usage and context. Basically, a vocabulary of frequently used words and terms is loaded into the system, and it draws from those each time.  What&amp;#039;s with the lingo? Text messages look like secret code.  The maximum you can write in a text message is usually 160 characters, which is just a sentence or two. So acronyms developed as a kind of shorthand\u2014lol for laughing out loud, brb for be right back. A lot of it is phonetic, combining numbers and letters, like c u 2morrow for see you tomorrow. And since it&amp;#039;s difficult to produce punctuation, you get run-on sentences, no apostrophes, no contractions. What&amp;#039;s the etiquette for texting? There isn&amp;#039;t any. With the limited amount of space and the difficulty of typing anything except letters and numbers, the social graces are the first to go. There are no salutations or sign-offs. Texting is very direct\u2014that&amp;#039;s part of its cool chic. How does texting to vote or buy something work? In most instances, the company will give you a five-digit number, which is the address that you&amp;#039;ll use instead of a phone number. The other approach, which is used on American Idol, is to assign each contestant a text address. You type the address, hit send, and that&amp;#039;s your vote. Texting is also being used more commercially. You send a company a text message and they&amp;#039;ll send you back a discount coupon code or an advertising blurb. Are there any neat texting tricks? To get local listings, you can text message Google by typing in 466453 as the address. In the body, type in pizza and your zip code, for example, and they&amp;#039;ll immediately text you back with the nearest pizza place, address and phone number. It&amp;#039;s a free service, which is great. You can also get movie times, flight arrivals, even glossary terms, and French translations. How much does texting cost?  It generally costs ten cents to send and receive messages. Or you can get an unlimited plan and pay a flat fee every month\u2014that&amp;#039;s what people with teenagers usually do. I&amp;#039;m sold. What are ten terms I need to know to start texting? These are useful: r u \u2013 are you....? u \u2013 see you rn \u2013 right now l8r \u2013 later yr \u2013 your g2g \u2013 got to go hv \u2013 have mtf \u2013 more to follow ttyl \u2013 talk to you later ttfn \u2013 ta-ta for now And now you can get House Beautiful for your mobile phone! To access our new mobile site, send a text message with HBINFO in the body to 432778. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.housebeautiful.com/shopping/home-gadgets/a36/technophobia-text-messaging-0607/>