Text Messaging

Text Messaging: now there's a mystery to me.

I was never good at typing on the little phone keyboard and, even with my qwerty keyboard under my new phone, I find the whole text messaging thing hard to come to grips with. It takes me forever to type them and a text message can sit in my phone for days without being read. It takes me longer to read/reply/read/reply/read/reply than the conversation would have taken.

The only time I find text messaging useful is if I'm in a meeting (or somewhere else where I can't speak) But if I'm sitting there text messaging I'm not paying attention to what I should be doing (eg paying attention in the meeting) which I find really rude when other people do to me.

Some people say texting is cheaper. I say not. At 25p per text by the time we get finished with the volley of texts I've spent more than the cost of a 2 minute phone call. And I've paid half the charge. I rarely initiate text conversations so I guess it is some people's way of getting me to pay for part of the call.

There are times when texting does come in handy: when a simple yes or no answer is required and likely. My life is not so black and white and I usually need to expand on my answers although this could be my propensity to pontificate more than anything else.

Text messaging is big in the UK. Not so big in the USA. What is it about the UK culture that makes it so much more popular?

But whatever you do don't stop texting me!