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SMS, because it is created in a written medium, has some features of casual printed communication. The most understandable way users create written characteristics in their language is through usage of standard spelling, punctuation and capitalisation in order to make their messages recognisable as entire sentences. This can also show however, interactive and affective characteristics of conversation even in its written state. SMS also allows users to abbreviate words without losing any meaning e.g. October and November can be shortened to 'Oct/Nov' etc. Similarly, punctuation, such as the full stop, is often unnecessary, as the end of a line will signify the end of an utterance. The resourceful use of punctuation (or as Koritti describes it, 'constructing paralinguistic markers quite ingeniously as well as breaking orthographical conventions in an inventive manner' (1999: 15)), appears to be a personal stylistic choice. Users often take advantage of the presence of both written and spoken aspects of SMS. One way a text message might reflect this would be to combine features of a written medium with features of a spoken medium, but this combination is usually not intentional.

Replacements are written representations of the sounds that one would make when saying certain words e.g. 'kt' instead of Katie. The choice to create a verbal illustration of this name tends to indicate that, at least in part, the user may be thinking of this utterance in its spoken form even though every other part of the text message may well be created within a written framework. One entirely 'spoken' aspect of text messages is not actually spoken at all, but rather emoted. To emote is to create a written representation of what the user is physically doing as he/she texts. Emoticons, such as :-(,:-) and ;-) are a representation of body language, which would otherwise be missing from non face-to-face communication. These can change the meaning of a text message just as much as body language can change the meaning of verbal communication in spoken discourse. Texters may also take advantage of different phonetic spellings in order to create different types of verbal effects in their messages such as 'hehe' for laughter, or perhaps 'muaha' to express a menacing laughter. Letters and numbers are also often combined (or used alone) for the sake of brevity and convenience e.g. 'See you later' can be texted as 'CU L8er'. 'Over time, if text messaging shares similar properties to emailing, we could expect these abbreviations to stabilise and become more widely-known' (Grinter & Eldridge, 2001: 17). These variations of message composition often depend on the individual. This investigation hopes to learn which is more prevalent, 'free text' (or Multitap), where the user must push each button several times to get to the desired letter, number or symbol, or those who make use of the 'text dictionary', which is faster, but more rigid and users creativity is curbed.