India, April 18 -- Merry Christmas. That was the world's first text message, sent by software architect Neil Papworth in 1992. Short, sweet, to the point. Now? We're wading through five-part voice notes from our friend and are communicating via White Lotus memes on the College Squad group chat.

There was a time we would txt lyk dis because SMS could only accommodate 160 characters per message, and we were charged for every text we sent. But in the age of WhatsApp and Wifi, there's no need to squeeze the words in. And yet, texting has developed its own set of rules.

A 2016 study conducted by Binghamton University, State University of New York, suggests that emojis, irregular spellings and exclamation points in text messages aren't signal...