Mark Corrigan, Peep Show.

They also both use xs, as do one or two friends, but I’ve never been called to account for not using them.

Of more concern to me is what Ian touched upon – when to end a text conversation. Should I acknowledge receipt of their final missive or not bother sending a pointless text and risk them being unsure of whether or not I’ve seen the message? Such a conundrum.

As for your aside, John, I think a good number of teenagers do indeed use texts even for emotional outpourings, though obviously they’re of a different nature to letters or emails. What I’ve witnessed seems to involve a delicate dance of increasingly personal messages sent over the course of an evening, or even several days: a drawn out, private conversation consisting of abrupt bursts of speech at irregular intervals. It’s kind of sweet in its own way.

Personally I prefer texts to phone calls. A phone call (like a person at the door) is an immediate interruption that must be dealt with, but a text is something you can look at in a few minutes when you have a moment.

Is that weird? Am I just weird?

As for not responding immediately, I rarely do. To me, a text message is like an email and a letter. It arrives, I read it, and I respond in my own goddamn time. If you want an instant reply use an instant form of communication such as a phone call. This came to a head with a former girlfriend who was somehow allergic to talking over the phone, and could only communicate via texting. She disagreed strongly with my continued insistence on sitting on texts until I could be bothered to reply, since it was her preferred way to reach me and WHY THE HELL WAS I IGNORING HER.

Needless to say, we’re not together any more. We still talk though.

*and to prove what a great communicator I am, witness the unending sentance that contains a dash, a semicolon, a bracketed clause and is even now continuing in a footnote without any signs of stopping. Oh.

The reply almost certainly wasn’t terminated with an X. It’s a wonder we’ve survived five years.

Another text message thing is people who MUST respond to any message they get. My mate’s like this. It’s not a “have to get the last word in” thing, it’s a “I don’t want them to think I’m being rude by not responding” thing.

But I’ll frequently have conversations with him where we’ll arrange to meet at the pub or whatever and so I’ll send a final “Cool, will see you [at arranged time] then.” or whatever and then just get an “ok” back.

On the flipside, my sister has more than once assumed I didn’t get messages from her just because I didn’t send her such a text. Sometimes I just don’t think a text requires a response. LEAVE ME ALONE.