In Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter tells a bewildered Alice, “You should say what you mean.” “I do,” Alice hastily replies; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.” This exchange best sums up the difference between the way a Gen Xer and a Gen Zee texts. One says what they mean; the other, means what they say—with a heavy undertow of subtext.

Gen X (1965-1980) has lived through many textual atrocities: The first such communication is documented to have taken place over Instant Messengers (Yahoo! And MSN) on computers when it was just a shade insolent (not passive aggressive) to type ‘K’, LOL (Laugh Out Loud), ROFL (Rolling On the Floor with Laughter) and BRB (Be Right Back); the omission of vowels, whn v typd lk dis, tip-toed into SMSes (Short Message Service) before predictive text swooped in to save communication and stopped things from spiralling jUZT wen dEy were gOing $oUTh.