An initial 4A?

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:00 PM +0100 6/28/02, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>--On Friday, June 28, 2002 12:24 pm -0400 Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
>>One interesting difference is in the alphanumeric mixing of today--
>>
>>CUL8R
>>F2T?  'free to talk'
>>B4N
>>2MORO
>>W84ME 'wait for me'
>>NE1
>>3SUM
>>J4F 'just for fun'
>
>
>I have the impression that some of this mixing started with the trend for
>personalised license plates, esp. use of '8' as a syllable in those.

Thanks for the suggestion, Lynne.  Does NE1 know of any sources on
the origin of alphanumeric initialisms?

>
>The txt stuff is rife over here, and a number of students in our historical
>linguistics/history of English courses have done projects on it, although I
>don't know that any have made connections between txting and pre-20th
>century forms.
>
>Lynne

Which brings up "OK as Ur-txt" as a possible title.

larry