With limitations on characters when it comes to writing a text message or composing a tweet, it’s becoming more and more tempting to abbreviate words just to get everything you want to say in.
Using abbreviations like ‘l8r’ or ‘gr8’ will certainly help you lose a couple of characters, but you could run the risk of losing customers too.
If you’re texting on behalf of your company, we’d encourage steering well clear of ‘txt spk’; however an interesting study by Coventry University and University of Tasmania which was published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology has suggested that using abbreviated words at a young age will actually help improve spelling in later life.
The study, which saw over 160 children between the ages of eight and 16 take part, showed that the most creative texters were also the best spellers and that use of ungrammatical words and abbreviations were linked to an improved spelling ability 12 months later.
It’s been suggested that these results can be related to the fact abbreviated words are often spelt phonetically meaning children are able to practice spelling out words and how letters sound together when they are outside of the classroom.
At FireText we encourage creative content in your SMS marketing campaigns and if you can’t quite fit everything you want to say into 160 characters, give us a call – we’ve had lots of practise!
You can read the full BBC news article here.