Everything Old Is New Again: A Telegraph Primer On Texting, Tweeting, Messaging

5 Tips Guaranteed To Improve Your Text Messages

These invaluable yet simple-to-implement tips are culled from How to Write Telegrams Properly, a small booklet composed by Nelson E. Ross in 1928 about over-the-wire (or online, get it?) communication, which has been in popular use since 1835. For today’s modern application the word “telegram” has been replaced by “text.”

1. Employ Less Words
   Naturally, there is a right way and a wrong way of wording texts. The right way is economical, the wrong way, wasteful. If the text is packed full of unnecessary words, words which might be omitted without impairing the sense of the message, the sender has been guilty of economic waste. A man high in American business life has been quoted as remarking that elimination of the word “please” from all texts would save the American public millions of dollars annually.
2. Use The Proper Address
   Clear, complete addresses are desirable not only from the point of view of the sender, but also from that of the company, since difficulties of delivery are thus reduced to a minimum. There are occasional evidences both of burdensome prolixity and of baffling inadequacy. Here is a good rule: Include in the address of your message all matter that is necessary, but only such matter as is required and no more to enable the company to identify and locate the addressee. If you have occasion, for example, to text the President of the United States, a message addressed to: The President, White House, Washington, D. C. will reach the Chief Executive if filed at any text office in the world. To write it: His, Excellency, The President of the United States, The White House, Washington, D. C. is to be needlessly verbose.
3. Don’t Allow Unnecessary Words To Creep In
   To paraphrase, “Brevity is the soul of texting.” Except perhaps in the case of a long Night Letter, the practice of adding such words as “Dear Madam” or “Dear Sir” at the beginning of the message is obsolete. These words are charged for, and so accustomed is the public to text brevity, that their use often produces amusement rather than the expression of formality which the sender desired.
4. Eliminate Small Words
   At a slight sacrifice to smoothness, but with a saving in tolls which often more than compensates, small words may be eliminated from your text without impairing the sense. Let us take an ordinary, every-day message: We received your very fine letter and your text this morning stop on the morning after you left us there were so many things to be done that all we could do was to pack up and get a taxi in time for the train we are leaving now. This would do quite well for a letter, but for text purposes it can be greatly simplified: Received your very fine letter and Text this morning so many things to be done morning after you left all we could do was pack and get taxi for train are leaving now.
5. Use The Telephone
   “Every telephone is a text office,” has become a slogan of the text companies. This means that you can call the company from any telephone and dictate your text. If you are a regular subscriber to the telephone service, the cost of the text is almost everywhere added to your monthly telephone bill.

Get the awesome complete list of original tips here: How to Write Telegrams Properly.

Every Tuesday is Retro Tuesday over at Crazy Suburban Mom. Please don’t judge her ’til you’ve gone a mile in her minivan.