John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Over-Texting

The beautiful emptiness of brevity.

In texting.

I am still guilty of “over-texting” or texting like one would write formally.

I think secretly I imagined at my funeral someone referencing my last text message and wanted it to at least be grammatically correct.

But verbosity and adherence to grammatical rules (and even the rules of spelling) misses the point of the texting medium.

It is to convey information rapidly –without all the constraints of formal written or spoken dialogue.

The “K” response in texting used to really irritate me. It seems so dismissive and meaningless.

And yet I know found myself using it.

K.

And it’s empowering.

Notice this next time you are texting with someone. The person who texts less is almost always the more powerful one in the relationship.

Which means I am now going to try to find a way to reduce all my text responses to a single letter.

I just have to figure out the right letter.