More on early txtng

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:20 PM -0400 8/19/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 8/19/2010 02:08 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>Sorry, it's 1832, "To Miss Catherine Jay, of Utica"
>
>Good enough to put down the British Library, being before their 1867.
>
>Joel
>
Yup, by a generation. Back when I posted this in 2002, I was
wondering if anyone else had other examples of alphanumeric
proto-texting of the "b4" type from the early 19th c. but nobody
responded.  Of course the quest is still open, and now the prize is
to see by how many years we can antedate those Brits!  (It wouldn't
surprise me if someone found other examples from the newspapers of
the 1820s, when the "O.K." fad was in full flower.)

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org