Thursday, February 26, 2009

This will reveal to you the full extent of my tech-illiteracy.

But I'm going to ask, anyway:

Can one send text messages in italics?

Despite my use of a crappy phone (well, not too crappy, but not a cool iPhone like everyone else has), I love texting. I text more than I call, more than I email, etc. Perhaps owing to the seven years I've been studying English, I like to text in Standard American English as much as possible: I punctuate correctly, I use standard syntax and spelling (OK, not always spelling). And I like my texts to be emphatic. Sadly, my phone doesn't enable the use of italics, which I use a lot in other forms of written communication. Italics are my lifeblood. Or one of my lifebloods. Bloods: that's a weird plural.

So tell me: am I missing something? Can I actually use italics now? Am I just too technologically incapable to realize it? Or what?

2 comments:

ahook said...

Nah, you can't send italics unless it's some network specific formatting, which probably doesn't exist.

I also used to always send well-formed, Standard AmE messages, but in the last year or so I've drifted toward using lazy tech-patois like yr and tmw. There is a certain charm to it.

Peach Pit said...

Actually, I have too - thanks to those crzy LOL cats!

It baffles me that there is no italicized texting. Maybe I can invent it...? Or take credit for it.