The world has adopted a completely new version of English in the past several decades. ‘SMS language’, often known as ‘Textese,’ has become incredibly popular, with fewer letters and more numbers than standard English. However, because texting terms like “TTYL,” “B4”, and “HRU” are so common and used in our daily interactions, it might be easy to overlook why they have become so prevalent.
The stringent 160 character limit on SMS messages is easily forgotten because to advanced message stitching technologies. There is still a limit, even if we allow our messages to get longer and less filled with “text talk.” Every SMS that was longer than 160 characters used to be sent as two different texts. Every SMS that goes over this limit counts as two, even though they now seem to have been sent as one. Additionally, SMS providers charge for messages longer than 160 characters as though they were two.
Perhaps you’re wondering why 160 characters? Why is there any limit on the character count in an SMS? And whence did this ridiculous rule come from? In 2015, we provided the answer to this topic, which has long perplexed fervent SMS senders. However, we felt that it was important to clarify this once more. Although it has been a little difficult to determine the exact origin of the 160 character limit due to inadequate documentation and numerous rumors, we have identified the two most likely explanations. We’ll leave it up to you to determine which you believe to be right.
First theory
Friedhelm Hillebrand is the main character in the first narrative. The Global Systems for Mobile Communications, an organization that establishes guidelines for the global mobile market, had Friedhelm as its chairman. It was Friedhelm’s crucial responsibility to set a character restriction for text messages.
Friedhelm, being the pragmatic man, took a cup of tea and a typewriter and began writing down questions and random sentences. He tallied the characters in each after writing a good number of them and discovered that the average was, you got it, about 160.
After receiving some postcards, he tallied the letters in each line and discovered that the average was slightly less than 150. Finally, he examined many of the messages that were received via a Telex. You may anticipate that the number of characters in each transmission would vary because Telex transmitters had no character restriction. Friedhelm discovered, however, that the character count was comparable to the messages on the postcards. How coincidental! After Friedhelm presented this information to the board, they agreed to impose a 160 character limit on each SMS.
Second theory
A bit more technical and possibly more accurate is the second story. Friedhelm was employed by the Global method for Mobile Communications (GSM), a company that used cellular towers located around the area to interpret calls using a method known as “packets.” These packets only have 140 bytes of space available after the call information is removed.
When transferred from tower to tower, SMS messages ride on the back of the call packets rather than receiving their own packets. Therefore, it is thought that Friedhelm and his associates looked at the remaining area and estimated the number of SMS characters they could fit there.
They determined that the character limit for an SMS should be 140 in 1985 since one character was essentially equivalent to one byte. Since then, advancements in GSM technology have allowed them to reduce the size of each character to less than one byte, which means that 160 characters may fit into a single SMS. Consequently, it was decided to restrict each SMS to 160 characters.
We may never know if story one is true, whether the truth lies in story two, or whether both are true, but we certainly like hearing the theories.
Which do you think is true?