Mumbai: Though it might be easier to hammer out an abbreviated text message from your mobile phone, it makes it much harder for the recipient to make sense of what you're trying to say, according to an Australian researcher.

Besides ruining spelling, abbreviated SMS messages take longer to read and understand than conventional English, says University of Tasmania lecturer Nenagh Kemp.

Kemp asked 55 undergraduate students to compose, and then read out aloud text messages in English and in "textese", or abbreviated text message language commonly used by the younger generation of today. His small practical experiment found that while students used textese significantly faster, it took almost half of them twice as long to read these messages out aloud, as compared to text messages written in proper English.

A number of the common abbreviations were hard to decipher, or were misinterpreted. Students also made more errors reading the textese messages, as compared to the ones written in English. The study showed that it took 55 students around 26 seconds to read a "text speak" message aloud, while it took only 14 seconds for them to read similar messages written out with full English spelling.

The most common abbreviations were easily understood, such as 2, 4, c and u. The more difficult ones included ttyl (talk to you later), bbs (be back soon), pu (pick up) and cn (seeing you soon). Kemp carried out the research on second and third year student, who use "textisms" all the time.

Kemp, a psychology lecturer specialising in language use, was quoted in the media as saying that as skilled adult readers, people are more used to reading full words and sentences, making textese harder for them to decipher. Kemp says the research dispells the popular notion that textese is runining spelling, as it does not reflect literary skills, at least in adults.

Kemp's word of caution to the generation that is quite adept at using textese – it may be fine as a time-saver on the mobile phone, but it should not creep into "email, student essays or job applications".