Rule 5 – Abbreviations
Whether you use initialisms, abbreviations, acronyms, slang, or insider lingo, be sure your audience doesn’t feel left out. Help them to feel part of the team, being “in the know.”
Rule 6 – Capitalization
NO ONE WANTS A TEXT LIKE THIS. All caps just raise everyone’s stress levels. You can always say what you need to say with lowercase.
Rule 7 – Laughter Level
Are you “haha-ing” too much? Some people use LOL at the end of every sentence like punctuation. Some laughter is good and helpful. Too much and you’ll lose people left and right.
Rule 8 – Broken Links
In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “AAUGH!” This is my personal pet peeve. When someone sends a hyperlink that doesn’t work, it screams that they think so little of people not to check it before hitting send. Please, please, please, check that your links work.
Text messaging can be very helpful in communicating and building community.
Use it well. Use it wisely. Use it effectively.
This article about rules for texting originally appeared on smallgroupnetwork.com, and is used by permission.
