An Amazing List of Text Message Symbols You’ll Want to Bookmark

What do you do when you want to show your state of mind in a text message? You use symbols, of course. This Techspirited article gives you a list of various symbols and abbreviations that you can use in your text messages…

Believe it or not, for most of us, our messages remain incomplete without the use of text message symbols. Many times, the use of these emoticons is even unnecessary, but we have become so used to them that we can’t do without them. Texting abbreviations and symbols undoubtedly help us in reducing the number of characters. A simple smiley can express whether you are happy, sad, or even sarcastic about something. Texting abbreviations help you save space in messages. Besides, who would type ‘Hope to see you soon’, in a text message from your cell phone, when you can simply type HTSUS and get the message conveyed.

History of Text Messaging Symbols
Unbelievably, the use of the emoticons can be traced back to the year 1857. In April 1857, the National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide documented, for the first time, the use of the number 73 in Morse Code to represent ‘love and kisses’. In 1912, Ambrose Bierce, the famous satirist and author of ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ proposed the use of the symbol \__/ to represent a smiling mouth. In fact, teletype machine operators had been using emoticons even before 1973. Scott Elliot Fahlman, a computer engineer from Carnegie Mellon University, is supposed to be the first person to have proposed the most popular text message symbols or smiley faces, 🙂 and 🙁 to be used as joke markers.

Present Day Symbols
The present day symbols follow the process of graphical replacement. Most cell phones are enabled with the feature to replace the use of symbols like 🙂 or 🙂 into the corresponding smiley face. The punctuation marks 🙂 when used together in instant messengers, is automatically replaced to a smiley representing a smile. In most cases, it is a round yellow head, with two dots representing the two eyes and a curve representing the mouth. Even computer programs like Microsoft Word convert symbols that we type into their respective smileys. Now, without wasting much time, let us take a look at the different symbols and their meanings.

Text Message Symbols List
The most common combinations of punctuation marks and alphabets which are generally used to represent these symbols, have been explained below with their meanings.

Text Message Abbreviation List
In addition to the text symbols given above, there are various other shortcuts or abbreviations used to get the message across, either to save on characters used or to save time as well. These are usually invented either by necessity or accident, and then become mainstream when used extensively. Some of the more common text message abbreviations which are used very often have been listed below along with their meanings.

So now that you have your hands full with all these text symbols, and shortcuts, I will Cya l8r then. Happy txtng. Cheers!