You can't just shorten every word. I think condemning the new language of messages (Sutherland 2002) as a “digital virus” is wrong. I feel a little silly using certain abbreviations and I want to feel like I'm speaking well with correct punctuation, correct verb forms and tenses, using the right words at the right times. Some situations we find ourselves in force us to place constraints on our messages. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter impose a character limit on the amount of text allowed in a status or tweet. Rather than start a new message, people prefer to go back and edit some words and shorten them to fit within the site's limitations. If you're composing a tweet that's just over the specified amount of text, why delete it or start a completely new message when you can simply remove a few letters and use logic to find another way to get the message out. Crystal mentions several novels via text that would be quite annoying for this 31-year-old mother of three, who just wants to read a book and not try to figure out what SMH