Practical part

     Text  devices

     Single letters can be used to replace words. Examples include:

     be becomes b

     see becomes c

     are becomes r

     you becomes u

     why becomes y

     Equally, single digits can be used to replace words. Examples include:

     ate becomes 8

     for becomes 4

     to, too, or two becomes 2

     Individual syllables can be replaced with a single letter or digit. Examples:

     ate becomes 8, so:

     activate becomes activ8

     great becomes gr8

     mate becomes m8

     later becomes l8r

     plate becomes pl8

     be becomes b

     for or Fore becomes 4, so:

     before becomes (combining both of the above) b4

     therefore becomes there4More miscellaneous adaptations of characters include:

     ss being replaced with $

     oo being replaced with %

     Combinations of the above can be used to shorten single or multiple words. Examples: your and you are both become ur Other transcriptions of slang or dialect terms can be used if they are shorter than the original. A good example of this is the way in which because, often pronounced as cos in English, is written like so, saving four characters.

     Another device used in text language is the removal of vowels from a verb, such that a set of consonants remain, which should still be recognisable as a word. So, between could become btwn.

     Equally, whole words may be omitted, especially articles.

     Another device used, is the replacement of an 'orr' with the abbreviation 'oz'. Hence Sorry would become Soz and Tomorrow would become Tomoz. This can be further abbreviated into 2moz.

     'Sorry I forgot to phone you. I will see you tomorrow'

     ...would become...

     soz i 4gt 2 fon u.i c u 2moz

     The use of punctuation is limited. Only full-stops and exclamation marks are ever used in general. After a full stop, a space and capital letter is often omitted.

        There are a number of txt abbreviations which are commonly recognised (these are not to be confused with initialisms, which are also commonly used):

     Examples wuu2 - What are you up to?

     yw - you're welcome

     Text messaging translations can are easily made both to and from English as sampled below. Short messages can be made shorter still.

     Are you going to the pub tonight? becomes ru goin pub 2nyt

     Longer messages may also be considerably shortened. A typical text message might read: hi m8 u k?-sry i 4gt 2 cal u lst nyt-y dnt we go c film 2moz

     This is 60 characters long.

     This would "translate" into standard English as so:

     Hi mate. Are you okay? I am sorry that I forgot to call you last night. Why don't we go and see a film tomorrow?

     This is 112 characters long.

     Textese is a dialect of English that subverts letters and numbers to produce ultra-concise words and sentiments. The invention of mobile phone messages may be considered as its source, although elliptical styles of writing dating back to at least the days of telegraphese. There are no standard rules for writing SMS languages, and a lot of words can also be shortened, such as "text" then turns into "txt". Words can also be combined with numbers to make them shorter, such as "later" turns into "l8r". Its speed in which they can be written and helps in using fewest number of letters, and helps in dealing with space constraints of text messaging.

     Textese (also known as chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, texting language or txt talk) is the English language slang used in mobile phone SMS, social networks and instant messaging. It is an abbreviated form of English similar to a rebus. With predictive text input increasingly being used, it is becoming less common. This type of language does not always obey or follow standard English grammar; furthermore, the words used in the writing system may not be found in standard dictionaries.

     Cyber-English is that Internet and mobile phone users have popularized. It often originates with the purpose of saving keystrokes, and saving time.  
 

     3.2. THE TYPES OF ABBREVIATIONS ON THE NEWSPAPER “THE USA TODAY” 

     A major factor in the trend toward abbreviation is that of economy. Journalistic abbreviations are often occasioned by a desire to economise head-line space. In telegraphy; e.g. as well as computerized communications, the extra-time, space, and materials required for rendering long words and phrases is an important concern. Fortunately, redundancy of information exists in all speech, and this redundancy increases dramatically if the context is not known or if the message is long. Scientific studies indicate that up to 75percent of all information in relatively long communications is redundant, and this knowledge makes abbreviation not only possible but convenient.

     The American newspaper “The USA today” is the weekly edition printed in New York, USA.  We searched the Fri-Mon, august 29-sept.1, 2008 issue. This newspaper consists of 4 parts; each part is 12-18 pages. Most of the abbreviations are the names of international stocks, e-mail addresses; they depend on to one type of the abbreviations and one word repeats some times.

     At first we should give the definition to abbreviation and classify it. In abbreviations, we omit most of the letters and leave only enough – usually 2 or 3 letters for the word to be recognizable. Since these shortened forms save space and effort, they are nearly always made from expressions people use a lot. There 4 types of shortening:

      - Orthographical – the orthographical shortening of the word or a word phrase. The missing part can at all times be supplied by the listener, speaker, and reader. e.g. N-north, Mon – Monday

     - Lexical.  There are 4 types of lexical abbreviation:

     1. initials e.g. BTN – Big Ten Network NY – New York State

     2.acronyms e.g. BOSE – better sound through research LED – light-emitting diode

     3.clippings e.g. mpg – miles per gallon Mph – mile per hour

     4.blendings e.g. Cellphone – cellular telephone; Sportcaster – sport broadcaster

     5. Contractions as: she’s, he’d, it’s and others [see Appendix 1]

     - hybrid divided on to 3:

     1. acronym and initial are in one word e.g. NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration;

     2. a half acronym and a half initial word e.g. ABC – alphabet; television channel

     Washington D.C. – Washington District of Columbia

     3. mixing of letters and numbers e.g. 1A-12D number of pages; 3yrs – three years

     - and graphical e.g. $ - monetary symbol of US dollar; & - and (ampersand);

     We’ve found out more than 90 abbreviations. Orthographical 23, lexical 29, hybrid 24, graphical 8 [see Appendix 5]

     Orthographical abbreviation. One form entails representing a single word either by its first letter (as ‘N’ for ‘north’) by its or by its first syllable (as ‘No’ for ‘number’).

     Most of the abbreviations are lexical.  We have said that there are 4 types of lexical abbreviations.

     1. Initials. The use of the initial letters of a name or expression as an abbreviation for it, each letter being pronounced separately, as in BBC. Also it called alphabetically. Most of the shortenings are of this type. There are

     2. Acronym. It has some variants too.

     a. by first letters of the word 

     b. by combining syllables of each word.

     c. combine form, i.e. the first letter of the first word and the full meaning of the second one.

     Economic section connected with money, stock exchange. There are such abbreviations which depend to economy and may be read only by financiers.

     [see Appendix 6] All of them are orthographical shortenings. 

     3.3. THE MODERN TYPE OF SHORTENING TO ABBREVIATE THE TELEPHONE NUMBERS  

     Abbreviating the telephone numbers means to write the letters instead of the numbers. Not just a simple series of letters, to combine the whole word instead of the appropriate number. At a phone number there are a lot of digits which are very difficult to memorize.

     e.g.

     1-800-THE LOST

     1-888-777-VEGAS

     1-800-USA-CLAS

     1-800-GO STIHL

     1-877-LAND WYO

     1-800-WYNDHAM

     To dial such number is very easy. At the phones on each button is letters in alphabetical order.

     They are: 

     1 – punctuation marks;

     2 – A, B, C;

     3 – D, E, F;

     4 – G, H, I;

     5 – J, K, L;

     6 – M, N, O;

     7 – P, Q, R, S;

     8 – T, U, V;

     9 – W, X, Y, Z;

     0 - gap

     This is in advertisement trick to made people easily memorize a company’s, shops’, TV-channels’ and other innumerous organizations’ phone numbers. It’s very popular in America. Because its industrialization, civilization developed. Every man has a mobile phone in his pocket. That’s why this style popularized. Also they choose such series of numbers to be the word appropriate to their subject. E.g. at this number “1-800-THE LOST’ they find lost people. This number “877-LAND WYO” is a tourist company which offers summer vacation in Wyoming State. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     CONCLUSION 

     Having analyzed the problem of abbreviations and of shortening of words in Modern English we could do the following conclusions:

     a) The problem of abbreviations in Modern English is very actual nowadays.

     b) There are several kinds of shortening: shortening proper, blending, abbreviations.

     c) A number of famous linguists dealt with the problem of shortening of words in Modern English. In particular, Profs. Ullmann and Broal emphasized the social reasons for shortening, L. Lipka pointed out non-binary contrast or many-member lexical sets and gave the type which he called directional opposition, V.N. Comissarov and Walter Skeat proved the link of homonymy influence with the appearing of shortened words, etc.

     d) The problem of abbreviations is still waits for its detail investigation.

     Having said about the perspectives of the work we hope that this work will find its worthy way of applying at schools, lyceums and colleges of high education by both teachers and students of English. We also express our hopes to take this work its worthy place among the lexicological works dedicated to the types of shortening. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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