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Category: Project

Description: The purpose of this study was to determine whether certain textisms (texting cues) were perceived as more comfortable than others, both in the context of conversation as well as with regards to the general perception of the textism. Participants were assigned to one of two conversations and were asked to rate how comfortable they would feel after each statement in a conversation. Next, they were all asked to rank the general comfort ratings of each textism. We predicted that participants would feel more comfortable with the usage of emoticons (a smiley face) and initialisms (JK), whereas they would feel less comfortable with typographical symbols (…) and capital letters (WHAT) in general, as well as in the context of a conversation. Results indicated that, globally and in the context of a conversation, participants perceive initialisms and emoticons as more comfortable and typographical symbols and capital letters as less comfortable.