How long before English as we know it turns into a texted lauguage, my wife was recently marking her students Law exams and the amount of text language used was incredable, theword you has almost dissapeared and has ben replaced by 'U', For is now 4, the word question is now always ?, i am speaking more about the written word than the spoken, if you think its not that big check this website where you can now translate Text messages or learn to write them. Here is an example.

http://www.lingo2word.com/translate.php

Or put another way:

Arethespacesbetweenwordsmoreimportantthanthewordsthemselves?

Could English change to eliminate or reduce spaces - just as 'all together' has become 'altogether'.

Also the use of a double space after a fullstop has all but died out.

For example this sentence could become "theuse of a doublespace afterafullstop has allbutdiedout". This gives more than a 50% reduction in the number of spaces without a loss of understanding.

Will the use of twitter and text messaging drive English to become shortened?

Nuts. Crackers. Bananas. Fruitcake. Why is there such a curiously consistent idiomatic connection between mental illness and food? Is this particular to English, or is it reflected in other languages?