How To Text Message

How To Text Message

This film gives you an essential guide to text messaging. It includes information on predictive text, emoticons and initialisms. Learn the basics of sending a text message with help from VideoJug.

You Will Need

• 1 Mobile Phone

---

Step 1:

Basic texting

The simple method is to type each letter of your message individually. Each key on the mobile key pad has three letters on it - press a key once to get the first letter, twice the get the second and three times to get the third. It takes some getting used to but it'll be second nature before you know it. Trouble is, it can be very time consuming to text in this way. Fortunately, there's a quicker route...

---

Step 2:

Predictive text

Predictive text means that you press each key only once and your phone guesses which word you are typing from the likely combination of letters. It usually guesses right, but if not you can cycle through the options it's come up with or enter your own words into the dictionary. Predictive text can be turned on in your messaging options.

---

Step 3:

Emoticons

The trouble with text - (predictive or otherwise) is that you can't include any intonation, so an easy way to add nuance to your texts is with emoticons. No, that's not a transforming robot toy from the 80's, but a simple indication of your feelings to go with your words. Emoticons are usually human faces made out of letters and punctuation marks. For example a colon, a hyphen and a bracket looks like a smiling face when you look at it sideways. You can shorten it by just using the colon and bracket. Using this technique, you can show that you're happy, sad , surprised, angry, winking, bored, blowing a raspberry and so on. If you get one of these and are in any doubt as to its meaning, try to picture it as a face and that'll usually help you work it out.

---

Step 4:

Initialisms

There are also some common initialisms that have spread from people using messaging services on the internet. The most common of these is LOL, which stands for Laugh or Laughing Out Loud. You may also see ROTFL (Rolling On The Floor Laughing) and IMHO (In My Humble Opinion). These initialisations grow in number on an almost daily basis, so it might be best to search the internet for an up to date dictionary.

---

Step 5:

Media messaging

But if words flying through the air as if by magic aren't Twenty-First century enough for you, how about pictures and even video? If your phone has a camera built in there's a good chance it can send picture messages. When you go to your "Messaging" menu, you should have the option send a picture message, or try opening a menu while you're browsing the picture's you've taken and you should see an option to "send" that picture. The latest phones also support video messaging, where you send a short video clip to another phone and this works in a similar way to picture messaging. Just be aware that this kind of "media" messaging costs more than text messaging and you'll have to make sure that you have the right network settings installed on your phone, as not all handsets have them by default. If you're having trouble sending or receiving media messages, pop in to your network provider's shop or have a look at their website to get the information you need.