Just because texting is easy doesn’t mean it’s easy to do it well. Just like driving, the more you practice and work at it, the better you’ll perform.
By contrast, if you put in as little thought as possible and assume you’re a master, guess what: you’re also probably that driver that no one can believe has a license.
Capitalization is not negotiable
Most phones will automatically capitalize the first word in your sentence. Why? Because it matters. It’s up to you to make sure that proper nouns like names, cities, and brands have their first letter uppercase.
Can you imagine how annoying this post would be if everything were lowercase? Don’t do it.
Periods, commas, questions marks, and exclamation points
Speaking of annoying, when did people decide that periods were unnecessary? This is also something that your phone will try to do for you. On an iPhone, if you double-tap the space bar, it will put a period after your last word.
It is not cool to forego punctuation, people. It might be faster to write, but it’s slower to read. It would be as if all road signs and traffic lights were gone. How would we know when to stop, slow, and go?
Read it first before hitting send
Most texts today sound like a drunk chimpanzee failed third-grade and spent 20 years hiding in a cave starting fires and making banana art.
That is to say complete thoughts are not expressed in single sentences, with each idea getting its own paragraph. You see how this blog post is written? We’re practicing what we’re preaching. After writing it, we proofread it for errors, changed some things, and only then published it. A text is no different.
Before you send an email, would a text do?
Finally, many people are still sending emails when a text would be far easier to read. If all you have is a picture, question, or single statement, pop that sucker into a text.
If your topic is more complex, e.g. more than two paragraphs worth of ideas, then compose an email.
Whether you do text or email, remember that it’s all writing. And if you’re about to do the voice-to-text feature, stop, drop your phone into water, and leave. There’s no place for that in 2016.
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