How the kids text so fast (T9 mode for dummies)

We’ve come to a time where texting is often easier than calling. Maybe you don’t want to interrupt someone, or maybe you simply don’t want to talk to them at the moment. Either way, texting in traditional ABC mode can be tedious – so much so that it makes it impractical to compose an entire message. Until you get one of the increasingly-popular ‘smart’ phones with a full keyboard, you’re stuck with only 12 buttons.

Ever wonder how the kids seem to get their messages out so fast? They’re not punching buttons repeatedly for each letter – they’ve learned the power of most phones’ ability to use T9 mode. Basically, it allows you to type with 10 keys (0-9) much faster then traditional ABC mode.

In ABC mode, you have to literally spell out each word by choosing each letter from each key it’s on by pressing the key 1, 2, 3 or sometimes 4 times. Here’s the typical layout (your phone may vary):

On this phone the '0' cycles valid words and the '#' is for spaces.

1: symbols and punctuation
2: abc
3: def
4: ghi
5: jkl
6: mno
7: pqrs
8: tuv
9: wxyz

So in ABC mode, if I wanted to type the word ‘school’, I’d have to press ’7′ four times, ’2′ three times, ’4′ twice, ’6′ three times, ’6′ three times (again), and the ’5′ three times. That’s 18 presses to spell a simple 6-letter word. There’s got to be an easier way – Enter T9 mode.

In T9 mode, the phone uses an internal dictionary to basically figure out what word you are trying to type from a library of available words using a given digit sequence. It works on one word at a time. To type ‘school’ in T9 mode, you’d simply press 7, 2, 4, 6, 6, 5. Since this combination doesn’t really spell many other words, T9 mode deciphers and spells out ‘school’ for you.

There are some things to bear in mind. First, it might not look like it’s getting the word right as you type it – since other, possibly more common words may use the same initial buttons as your word, you may see others words or word parts being spelled as you type. Just keep typing – trust it, it’ll resolve your key combination to the word you want. When you hit the space (usually the ’0′ or ‘#’ key) it’ll start the next word for you automatically.

Second, there are some common words that use the exact same key combinations – a fine example are the words ‘good’ and ‘home’, both spelled with 4, 6, 6, 3. If you type these and get ‘good’, but want ‘home’ instead, there is usually a quick correction. On my phone, you simply click ‘down’ on the 4-way pad to cycle through other words that are valid for the current combination (on some phones, this might be another key). You may have to do this more than once to find the correct word for certain (often shorter) combinations – 2, 6, 9 can spell ‘boy’, ‘box’, ‘bow’, ‘cow’, ‘any’, or ‘amy’ so you may have to scroll through a couple to find the right one. Still faster than ABC mode though.

When you come across a word that’s not in the dictionary, most phones will usually give you the opportunity to add it (once you’re temporarily switched to ABC mode to spell it out). Also, it’s pretty smart about punctuation – when spelling “don’t”, simply pressing 3, 6, 6, 1, 8 does the trick for me.

I hope this helps some of you (like myself) who immediately got frustrated when first trying to text and finding T9 mode worthless. Once it was explained to me and with a little practice, it made the sometimes-necessary act of texting a whole heck of a lot easier.