Amazon.co.uk 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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
