www.alphadictionary.com

The Economist has a language blog called Johnson. A recent post concerns new words offered up at the http://www.collinsdictionary.com website. I thought y'all might find it of interest.

I disagree with the inclusion of thanx as a word. It's merely an abbreviation that came about when texting was charged by the letter. It's not a new word, just a new spelling of an old one.

Minor point. Shortening words for texts and Twitter is not financial. The point is tweets are limited to 140 characters or spaces, and texts are similar, maybe 160. If you run over, the site refuses to accept it until you cut out spaces. Thus, abbreviations can abound, although some simply make two textx or tweets.

If Twitter message length restriction is not financial then why don't they allow tweets as long as the writer wants? An abbreviated format requires less computer resources than an unlimited format and computer resources cost money. Ergo: financial. QED &c. Oops, I am using old-fashioned message length restrictions. It saves ink.

Actually, I was going much further back in cell-phone time. When the concept of texting first came into being, messages were assessed a charge by the character, which could add up. As they became more popular, and people whined, the masters relented and stopped charging for each letter and space.

Proving once again, there is a history (etymology?) to everything.