Oxford Dictionary goes SMS savvy

:-),:-(,;-),:-Q,-*! This apparent gibberish is not a virus attack, but a popular way to express emotions through the mobile phone and e-mail, now included even in the stiff upper-lip Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

Sample this - ATB,KIT,CUL8R,B4N! This simply means all the best, keep in touch, see you later and bye for now.

All this and much more in electronic messaging and telephoning have been included in the dictionary and its editor Sally Wehmeier says "People like to know how to send out an e-mail, whether it is OK to use informal language, whether it is acceptable to start with hello, etc."

"While I must admit that the only ones I personally use regularly are BTW (by the way) and FYI (for your information) but I often see others use emoticons. These words and abbreviations have been included in other dictionaries," saysWehmeier.

The dictionary in fact explains that text messages, chat room messages and sometimes e-mails can be written using the smallest number of letters possible.

Pronouns, prepositions and articles may be omitted and abbreviations are widely used. It gives various examples of how words might be shown in a message - 2DAY (today), BBL (bye back later), WKND (weekend), MYOB (mind your own business) and IMHO (in my humble opinion).

In the same way, the dictionary says, one can show one's feelings by using symbols to represent a face. These are called emoticons.

Some of the popular ones listed in the dictionary include :-0 (surprised), :-Q (I don't understand), :-( (crying), :-1 (bored) and :-D (laughing).

Wehmeier says "Oxford University Press has a team of people who monitor the language used in these situations. What they record will serve when we are updating the dictionary."

On why the emoticons and electronic messaging has been included in the dictionary, Wehemier says "The need to explain them arises particularly in the case of the 'Advanced Learner's Dictionary' because our readers are not native speakers of English and they could easily get confused by something like '2nite'.

"Within a chat group whose members are familiar with each other, people develop their own abbreviations. However, we want to point out the most common ones. They are part of the language and so deserve a place in the dictionary's description of the language," he says.

The dictionary also explains new concepts, which people often use while talking about new technology like spam, flame, phising, ping, spoof and viral marketing.

New inventions and technologies like bluetooth, wi-fi, roaming, broadband and bandwidth have also been included in the dictionary, says Wehmeier.