There is a practice today known as texting (or sometimes even as txting). It’s the practice of sending a text-based message to a mobile phone from either another mobile phone or from a computer. If you look at your cell phone, it might offer you an option for sending text messages. More likely, though, it offers you the option of sending SMS messages. These are the same thing. The real name for the action that is provided to us by our sms providers is “SMS”. So why do we call this practice texting?

SMS is an abbreviation for Short Message Service. You use an SMS gateway to transmit a text-based message from one device to another. As we all know, this is a short message that is generally limited to 140 characters. What makes this type of message unique from other messages that you might send on the phone is that the SMS message is text-only. If you send a message with a photo or video attached then you’re sending an MMS message (a multi-media message). It is because of the fact that the SMS message is always a text message that it started to become known as texting. It’s a unique abbreviation for the act of sending a text message. And now it’s abbreviated even more (to txting) because SMS has caused us to start writing messages in short hand to keep within our space limitations.

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