Lol, ttyl, brb, and omg are just a few of the popular abbreviations that are used for text messaging. There are literally thousands of shortened phrases and single letters that are used in communication between people using cell phones, PDAs, instant messaging online, and chats on the Internet. New abbreviations surface in the world of text messaging every day, and more and more are becoming common household terms.



Some of the abbreviations for text messaging that are popular are numbers that stand for phrases. For example, the number 459 means I love you because those are the keypad numbers on a phone for ILY. The number 404 means I dont know. There are also numbers that girls and guys use to text each other that combine with letters to mean different things. For example, 2g2bt is interpreted as Too Good To Be True and 4col stands for the phrase For Crying Out Loud. Others are 4eae (for ever and ever), 2mor (tomorrow), and 6y (sexy).

There are many other abbreviations in text messaging that use longer strings of letters to stand for entire phrases. LYLAS is known to represent Love ya like a sister and NOYB is the representation for None of Your Business. Other popular lingo used in texting is LMAO for laughing my ass off, ASL for Age, Sex, Location, TDTM in text lingo means Talk Dirty to Me and GLHF is Good Luck, Have Fun.

In addition to the thousands of new abbreviations that pop up all the time, there are also some old classics that have been used for a while that are still used with todays new technology. Short abbreviations that have been used for years are BFF (Best Friends Forever), ASAP (As Soon As Possible), and TGIF (Thank Goodness its Friday).

There are also many abbreviations that are used between players in online gaming. Some of the most commonly used ones are PUG (Pick Up Group), NFS (Need for Speed), NBFAB (Not Bad For A Beginner), and NS (Nice Score).

While there are many abbreviations that people in all circles recognize, others are familiar usually to people in certain groups. There are abbreviations that are used usually only for online chats, others that are understood and used by online gamers, and there is actually a collection of abbreviations for text messaging that is used by the United States Government as well. Some of those are ACPT (Accept), RTRMT (Retirement), and ADMINR (Administrator).