Most text messages can be up to 160 characters long, which is about 30 or 40 words. The aim of text messaging is to reduce the number of characters needed to put across a meaning. The many abbreviations appear as acronyms and/or symbols that, to the uninitiated, can be almost incomprehensible. Punctuation is widely disregarded.

Text messaging developed as a shorthand used in chatrooms on the Internet, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly. The language became much more pronounced when mobile phone users, who don't have access to a full keyboard as chatroom users did, began text messaging. On a cell phone more effort is required to type each character and there is a limit on the number of characters that may be sent. This has caused a number of spelling modifications as well as the use of Camel Case. Camel Case, also known as bicapitalization, is the practice of writing compound words or phrases where the terms are joined without spaces, and every term is capitalized , such as in "CallMeBackNow". The name comes from a resemblance between the bumpy outline of the compound word and the humps of a camel.

Text message services have been developing rapidly throughout the world. By mid-2004 texts were being sent at a rate of 500 billion messages per annum. At an average cost of about 10 cents per message, this generated revenues in excess of $50 billion for mobile phone operators and represented close to 100 text messages for every person in the world.

You can find a text language to English and English to text language translator online at http://www.transl8it.com. Just type in your phrase and click to convert it.  As an example: "To be, or not to be, that is the question" converts to "2 b, o not 2 b, dat iz d :-Q".

Here's a brief sampling of text message abbreviations...