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Text speak mostly came from typing on dumb phone number pads to enter text. Like if you wanted to type “hi” you would have to enter “4-4 pause 4-4-4” As you might expect 5 putting presses with a pause between some of them just to say “hi” got painful. Thus the shortening.

Text messages were always charged per message. But each message was limited to 160 ascii characters or less if you were using other encodings. You could send 1 character or 160 characters but it cost 20 cents (at least where I grew up) either way.

This is all separate from l33t speak which is a whole different thing.

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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
T9 made this way better.

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- HiTekRedNek@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Oh yeah, I remember realizing my new razr had that and started going text crazy.
  
  I felt the same way the first time I discovered swipe-to-type on a smartphone! 🤣
  
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HiTekRedNek@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’m not sure why this had 0 votes, but it’s true. I’m old enough that my first cell phone experience was a bag phone from the 1980s.

Texting wasn’t even a thing for a while, but once it started, it was charged per message with like a 16 character limit. Then that limit was expanded, but it was always per message, not per character.

But, actually typing out a message was a pain the ass. There were no keyboards at first. You used the letters on the number pad to send your messages.

When T9 texting debuted that was a GOD SEND. Only needing to tap a lil number once to guess your word? Holy crap!

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