An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism or crasis.
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication channel or storage in a storage medium. An early example is an invention of language, which enabled a person, through speech, to communicate what they thought, saw, heard, or felt to others. But speech limits the range of communication to the distance a voice can carry and limits the audience to those present when the speech is uttered. The invention of writing, which converted spoken language into visual symbols, extended the range of communication across space and time.
In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. To encipher or encode is to convert information into cipher or code. In common parlance, "cipher" is synonymous with "code", as they are both a set of steps that encrypt a message; however, the concepts are distinct in cryptography, especially classical cryptography.
Electrical telegraphy is a point-to-point text messaging system, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs, that were devised to send text messages more quickly than physically carrying them. Electrical telegraphy can be considered the first example of electrical engineering.
Morse code is a telecommunications method which encodes text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the early developers of the system adopted for electrical telegraphy.
Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, typically transmitted over cellular networks.
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs.
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile phones, tablet computers, smartwatches, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible computer. Text messages may be sent over a cellular network or may also be sent via satellite or Internet connection.
A telegraph code is one of the character encodings used to transmit information by telegraphy. Morse code is the best-known such code. Telegraphy usually refers to the electrical telegraph, but telegraph systems using the optical telegraph were in use before that. A code consists of a number of code points, each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet, a numeral, or some other character. In codes intended for machines rather than humans, code points for control characters, such as carriage return, are required to control the operation of the mechanism. Each code point is made up of a number of elements arranged in a unique way for that character. There are usually two types of element, but more element types were employed in some codes not intended for machines. For instance, American Morse code had about five elements, rather than the two of International Morse Code.
Words per minute, commonly abbreviated as WPM, is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving.
Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the physical numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a prediction rather than repeatedly sequencing through the same group of "letters" it represents, in the same, invariable order. Predictive text could allow for an entire word to be input by single keypress. Predictive text makes efficient use of fewer device keys to input writing into a text message, an e-mail, an address book, a calendar, and the like.
Short codes, or short numbers, are short digit-sequences—significantly shorter than telephone numbers—that are used to address messages in the Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) and short message service (SMS) systems of mobile network operators. In addition to messaging, they may be used in abbreviated dialing.
A telegraphic address or cable address was a unique identifier code for a recipient of telegraph messages. Operators of telegraph services regulated the use of telegraphic addresses to prevent duplication. Rather like a uniform resource locator (URL), the telegraphic address did not contain any routing information, but instead could be looked up by telegraph office personnel, who would then manually direct the message to the office nearest the destination or to an intermediate office. Since the destination address of a telegram counted as part of the message, using a short registered address code saved the expense of sending a complete street address. Telegraphic addresses were chosen either as versions of a company's name or as a memorable short word somehow associated with the recipient. Occasionally, an organization would come to be best known by its telegraphic address, for example Interflora, Interpol and Oxfam. A telegraphic address was a valuable part of a company's corporate identity, and disputes sometimes arose when a competitor registered a telegraphic address similar to a trade name or identifier used by a rival.
Morse code abbreviations are used to speed up Morse communications by foreshortening textual words and phrases. Morse abbreviations are short forms, representing normal textual words and phrases formed from some (fewer) characters taken from the word or phrase being abbreviated. Many are typical English abbreviations, or short acronyms for often-used phrases.
Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as email and instant messaging.
In mobile telephony GSM 03.38 or 3GPP 23.038 is a character encoding used in GSM networks for SMS, CB and USSD. The 3GPP TS 23.038 standard defines GSM 7-bit default alphabet which is mandatory for GSM handsets and network elements, but the character set is suitable only for English and a number of Western-European languages. Languages such as Chinese, Korean or Japanese must be transferred using the 16-bit UCS-2 character encoding. A limited number of languages, like Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and a number of languages used in India written with a Brahmic scripts may use 7-bit encoding with national language shift table defined in 3GPP 23.038. For binary messages, 8-bit encoding is used.
Telex is a telecommunication service that provides text-based message exchange over the circuits of the public switched telephone network or by private lines. The technology operates on switched station-to-station basis with teleprinter devices at the receiving and sending locations. Telex was a major method of sending text messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.
In telecommunication, a commercial code is a code once used to save on cablegram costs. Telegraph charged per word sent, so companies which sent large volumes of telegrams developed codes to save money on tolls. Elaborate commercial codes which encoded complete phrases into single words were developed and published as codebooks of thousands of phrases and sentences with corresponding codewords. Commercial codes were not generally intended to keep telegrams private, as codes were widely published; they were usually cost-saving measures only.
Australian railway telegraphic codes were devised to reduce the size of telegraphic messages, though some survived into the telephone era. They were used in telegrams between various parts of the railway system, such as offices, stations, locomotive depots and goods yards.
In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had the world's first commercial telegraph company. British telegraphy dominated international telecommunications well into the twentieth. Telegraphy is the sending of textual messages by human operators using symbolic codes. Electrical telegraphy used conducting wires to send messages, often incorporating a telegram service to deliver the telegraphed communication from the telegraph office. This is distinct from optical telegraphy that preceded it and the radiotelegraphy that followed. Though Francis Ronalds first demonstrated a working telegraph over a substantial distance in 1816, he was unable to put it into practical use. Starting in 1836, William Fothergill Cooke, with the scientific assistance of Charles Wheatstone, developed the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph. The needle telegraph instrument suggested by Wheatstone, the battery invented by John Frederic Daniell, and the relay invented by Edward Davy were important components of this system.
