The Total Txtmsg Dictionary - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446610887 ISBN 13: 9780446610889

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 2001

Synopsis

A comprehensive high-tech dictionary features more than ten thousand entries, incorporating abbreviations, acronyms, keyboard-created symbols, terms, and definitions designed to help readers communicate efficiently over the latest telephone and portable Internet access technology. Original.

About this title

Review

E-mails and mobile phone text messages are rapidly evolving their own language. So this 21st-century answer to shorthand--to the despair of teachers and pedants who fear it will destroy "real" English--has spawned its own dictionary. The Total Txtmsg Dictionary lists over 5,000 abbreviations and acronyms from the unremarkable MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) and SWALK (sealed with a loving kiss) to the witty wackiness of HJAM8 (he's just a mate), FMDIDGAD (frankly my dear I don't give damn) and IHTM (I hate text messages). And that's just the start. The Total Txtmsg dictionary has abbreviations for every realm of life. It can lead you I&O (in and out) of BATNEEC (best available yet techniques not entailing excessive costs) to get your business a CBH (clean bill of health). Or, less commercially, IUDKIDKWD (if you don't know I don't know who does) that IU2LUVUBIAON (I used to love you but it's all over now). So now you're AFU (work it out for yourself!). To anyone new to it, this is a language as dense and esoteric as the most cryptic of codes. But it's spikily creative and it probably works well amongst fluent users. The book also provides a few 'standard' symbols and figures such as using # for number, @ for at and 8 for ate. Most obscure of all, for the uninitiated, are the "emoticons" at the end. (:-) means "good luck with your exams" while **:I* * means, apparently, well done you've stopped smoking. Many of the other examples are more rudely direct. This is an amusing, pocket-sized book, which will help you to appear fluent in the lingo even if you aren't. Given the ever-more-universal need to communicate fast messages in a small space, whether it's to set up a business meeting or a date with an Internet paramour, it's probably going to become almost as generally handy, in a different way, as an old-style comprehensive dictionary of abbreviations. --Susan Elkin

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Pub
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446610887
• ISBN 13: 9780446610889
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Editor: John Andrew, Blake Stephen