Texting

Instead of calling a person on his mobile phone, one can send a small text message with a few letters (as opposed to real words) to, for example:
-confirm a meeting (Are you going casino tonight? / Thanx.C u there)
-ask a question (From the last class or everything?)
-ask for directions/phone number
-send a joke or greeting, etc.

I often use text messages instead of calling the person because I want to avoid useless chat, or I am not in the mood of talking. It's also useful when you want to store information that you might otherwise forget if communicated verbally. Text messages are also useful when you want to send information to several people at the same time - just send the same message to 10 people instead of making 10 phonecalls.

Texting created a whole new language. People are usually reluctant to type in a whole word and instead use letters or numbers, and normally drop the vowels off. Popular trends include using 2 instead of 'too' or 'to', and u instead of 'you'. And of course capitalizing nouns is totally out of question in text messages!

Most of the Arabic speakers will also recognize the new 'Englishized' Arabic used in internet chats and text messages. Because we are more comfortable with English letters and Arabic words, we use English to write Arabic. I dont know who created the convention for this language, but its now very common. Some Arabic letters are not present in English so numbers or number-character combinations are used for them. The numbers 2, 3, 7, and 7., all represent Arabic letters.

I find it difficult to write normal English without inserting some of the texting conventions. I sometimes forget to capitalize the 'I', or use 'u' instead of 'you' in formal emails! Will there come a time when this will be normal in even formal communications?