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Text speak abbreviation is about what you say and how you say it – all rolled into 2-4 plain letters.
It’s not only a productive time-saving technology but a powerful ‘new’ form of communication. The simpler the writing becomes, the more complex and richer the author’s expression can be.
After introducing textspeak abbreviations into its pages, the respected Oxford English Dictionary found that folk uses initialisms not just to type more quickly but “to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse.”
WordTips studied more than 18 million geotagged tweets across every U.S. state and the 50 largest U.S. cities and then computed the average number of tweets (per 100,000) that contain typical textspeak abbreviations. They also examined the usage rate of abbreviations by the U.S. state compared to the national average to discover every state’s most uniquely popular initialism.
LOL is America’s favorite initialism, emerging in 1,411 out of every 100,000 tweets.
Twitter users in Georgia use initialisms in 5,942 tweets out of every 100,000 – more than any other American state.
Only 2,125 tweets per 100,000 from Idaho contain textspeak abbreviations – the lowest rate in the United States.
Tbh is the most uniquely popular initialism in Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington.
The Most Uniquely Popular Textspeak in Every U.S. States
According to Smithsonian Magazine, the first known use of omg was in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. Since the rise of the internet and cellphones, abbreviations have become even more widespread due to SMS language, aka textspeak.
A simplified form of language, textspeak generally omits punctuation and capital letters. Tbh is the most uniquely popular in seven states, including Indiana, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Yet omg is still going strong in the state of Wyoming.
The Most Uniquely Popular Textspeak in America’s 50 Largest Cities
If you want to have a private conversation on Twitter, this is where the DM comes in, and it’s the most uniquely popular textspeak in five cities. These include San Jose, Boston, and Memphis.
It is unclear whether residents in these cities are attempting to “slide into” someone else’s DMs and garner their crush’s attention. Yet could this be how some people found their bf, the most-used textspeak in LA, San Diego, Houston, and El Paso.
The Most Common Textspeak in the United States
Since its first-known usage in a 1989 chatroom, lol is by far the most common textspeak in the U.S., with 1,411 usages per 100,000 tweets. But why is it still so popular? Well, assuming most users mean “laughing out loud” and not “lots of love,” it could be because the term is now used to show empathy rather than outright hilarity, according to linguist John McWhorter.
The U.S. States that Use Textspeak the Most
According to Georgia.org, the Southeastern state has “thriving cities and charming towns” plus “world-class entertainment.” With so much for locals to do, textspeak saves a lot of time, and this could be why people in Georgia use it the most (5,942 usages per 100k tweets). Yet for those in the “Green Mountain State” of Vermont (2,154) — one of the least populated states — perhaps their pace of life is slower, resulting in less of a hurry to abbreviate every msg.
Methodology
WordTips analyzed over 18 million geotagged tweets across every U.S. state, allowing us to compare the usage rate of abbreviations by state/city compared to the national average.
To get the states’ results, the team retrieved geotagged tweets in English for 207 American cities and then aggregated these tweets based on the state each one belongs to. They searched for abbreviations in the tweets and contained 250 of the most widespread textspeak terms pulled from a Wiktionary page.
Next, they calculated the percentage of tweets containing each abbreviation (terms usage) for each U.S. state, city, and national level. They defined each location’s most uniquely popular abbreviation as the term with the most significant difference between its national usage and its reference location usage. Although this method doesn’t always yield the most-used term, it provides the most-used term compared to the national average.
Finally, they multiplied each term usage by 100,000 to get the average number of tweets that contain that abbreviation per 100,000 tweets.
