I don’t text message. What I mean is, I don’t send them and I don’t receive them because I don’t use a cell phone. I don’t own one,  I don’t want one, and I hope I never have to rely on one. That said, I do understand why people feel they need to have one.

It’s been a boon to parents, allowing them to keep tabs on the whereabouts of their young children. (I understand that, but my children are grown now.)

If you work in any type of service position, the cell phone allows your customers/clients to reach you 24/7. (I only partially understand this one, since the only persons that really must be on-call at all times are doctors, and even they employ professionals to screen their calls.)

Then there is a more recent phenomenon. People are exchanging their landlines for cell phones. It’s no longer cost effective to pay for both. (I understand this one, too, although I have chosen my landline over a cell phone.)

But this post isn’t about cell phones, it is about the brain-cell-devouring, punctuationless abbreviations that go hand in hand with text messaging. Anyone who is a lover of words, as I am, cannot help feeling threatened by this newest polyglot of hideous jargon.

Last week a friend of mine handed me her cell phone and said, “Read this cute message I received from my son.”

I could barely decipher what it said. Not only that, my stomach started to ache and if the message had been a little longer, I probably would’ve doubled over and retched. Don’t get me wrong. It was a cutesy message, but the lack of punctuation, and the insertion of unfamiliar abbreviations made my head spin.

It got me to thinking about an English professor I had many years ago. One day upon entering the classroom and before returning graded papers to the class, he said, “This is a sorry batch of essays. I have taken off for spelling mistakes and all grammatical errors. It’s most unfortunate because some of your stories were actually commendable, but as for the rest…”

If he thought those papers were atrocious, I hate to think about the papers he would receive today from kids who have spent years writing shorthand sentences because that is the most expedient method used when text messaging.

One other thing that puzzles me. If you’re holding a cell phone in your hand, people, why are you text messaging? Make the call, connect with your friends, and leave the precious English language intact.

[For those who are interested in Astrology, I’ve finished the Chinese Zodiac articles over at LifeScript.com. The last in my series was Year of the Pig. I’ll be starting a series of articles on the Sun Signs. You might enjoy reading the first one, Aries Woman .]