These days, though cell phones have done away with the 160 character upper limit, the 'shortcut' language is still in use to save money. With 160 characters counted as a single SMS, many people still try to get their entire message across in 160 characters itself, rather than paying additional amounts of money for crossing the 160 character limit. And as with everything else, this language has also evolved further, in fact so much that the other day, I got an SMS from my sister that I didn't understand at all. It seemed like total gibberish, and I had half a mind to call her and yell at her for wasting my time. Luckily for her, a younger colleague deciphered the message before any harm could be done. When I asked her later, she was surprised that I didn't understand, saying that it was a relatively simple message. Ahh, youth. Taking a look at some of the examples of messages on her phone just left me all muddled and confused. I kid you not, these messages sounded like some code or something, and I'm sure that all those government agencies [you know which ones I mean, right] would have been all excited had they caught a glimpse of them. This just led me to delve deeper into the matter, and I soon realized how out of touch I was. [read:old]. And that was just on the phone. With the Internet moving as fast as it is, IM and chat rooms have increased in popularity as well. Almost anyone who works on the Internet, or rather uses the Internet, has an IM account. What is this IM, you ask? IM or instant messaging, is an application that two or more people use to message in real time over the net. The more famous of these are AOL, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, MSN and ICQ. Very convenient if you need to talk to people who are geographically far away from you, all you need is the messenger and an Internet connection. Now this being real time, it is blazingly fast. It is just like talking, only you have to type what you want to say. If you think about that a little, you can see how having shortcuts will help you. For example: typing good morning will take longer than typing 'GM', which is the standard abbreviation for good morning in chat slang. You see where I am going with this? It is waaay faster to shorten words, make up abbreviations and use symbols that type the entire word or phrase. Unfortunately, the other party needs to understand these as well. Seeing something like 'TTYL' on you screen might boggle the mind, unless you know what it means. For the uninitiated, TTYL means Talk To You Later. There are thousands of these abbreviations and acronyms that are used in chatting and instant messaging, and there are new ones being made up everyday. When in use for a period of time, they become standard. So you might also be able to think up a few. Anyway, so you get my point. While well-known to all who use IM frequently, these might be strange for many. So I decided that I'd put up a list of at least the more common of these abbreviations and codes and symbols and other arcane shortcuts that have totally ruined the English language. Mind, it does come in handy when you want to send of a quick message. At least it works for me [I have been notorious for my laziness in typing, I usually just call] and though I don't use it so often now as I used to, I still manage a few a week. Abbreviations For Texting: IM, Chat, and SMS Slang Some Not So Common Chat Slang and Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Meaning
AFK	Away From Keyboard
AFPOE	A Fresh Pair Of Eyes
AIAMU	And I'm A Monkey's Uncle
AKA	Also Known As
ANFSCD	And Now For Something Completely Different
AOAS	All Of A Sudden
AWLTP	Avoiding Work Like The Plague
AYSOS	Are You Stupid Or Something
AYTMTB	And You're Telling Me This Because
BFO	Blinding Flash of the Obvious
BICBW	But I Could Be Wrong
BOTOH	But On The Other Hand
CMIW	Correct Me If I'm Wrong
DHTB	Don't Have The Bandwidth
DHYB	Don't Hold Your Breath
DKDC	Don't Know Don't Care
DQMOT	Don't Quote Me On This
ESO	Equipment Smarter than Operator
FTBOMH	From The Bottom Of My Heart
GALGAL	Give A Little Get A Little
GFETE	Grinning From Ear To Ear
GMAB	Give Me A Break
HITAKS	Hang In There And Keep Smiling
HIOOC	Help, I'm Out Of Coffee
HTNOTH	Hit The Nail On The Head
IBIWISI	I'll Believe It When I See It
ISWYM	I See What You Mean
J2LYK	Just To Let You Know
LMTCB	Left Message To Call Back
LOL	Laughing Out Loud
LOPSOD	Long On Promises, Short On Delivery
MTCW	My Two Cents Worth
MTFBWY	May The Force Be With You
NIMJD	Not In My Job Description
TOBG	This Oughta Be Good
WTTTM	Without Thinking Too Much
WYSIWYG	What You See Is What You Get

Some Romantic SMS Slang and Abbreviations

Abbreviation	Meaning
ALIWanIsU	All I Want Is You
ALOrO	All Or Nothing
AML	All My Love
BaBitsU	Baby It's You
BBSD	Be Back Soon Darling
BGWM	Be Gentle With Me
CSThnknAU	Can't Stop Thinking About You
CUIMD	See You In My Dreams
4EVRYRS	Forever Yours
GMeSumLuvin	Gimme Some Lovin'
GrwOldWivMe	Grow Old With Me
HITULThtILuvU	Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
HldMeClse	Hold Me Close
ICLWYL	I Can't Live Without Your Love
IJC2SalLuvU	I Just Called To Say I Love You
ImT14U	I'm The One For You
IOWAN2BWU	Only Want To Be With You
LtsGt2gthr	Let's Get Together
Luv2LuvUBab	Love To Love You Baby
M$ULkeCraZ	Miss You Like Crazy
RmbaYaMne	Remember You're Mine
SvnALMyLuv4U	Saving All My Love For You
SWALK	Sent With A Loving Kiss

Whew! ISTICSF! [I'm So Tired I Could Sleep Forever]...see I told you it's easy to make your own slang. Just make sure that the other person understands it. Otherwise you will end up wasting more time typing out the explanation as well. And wasn't all this made just to save time? This is just the tip of the iceberg though. There are many many more abbreviations and slang that are used in IM, SMS and chat, that would take me forever to cover. However, the lists above are pretty exhaustive and if you know most of them, you will be able to hold your own with serious chatters on the net. So go through them, and maybe the next time you chat with someone, you won't end up feeling like you are talking to some martian.