LOL and CU L8R have become common phrases in many people's everyday language.
But as they frantically bash out the text abbreviations for "laugh out loud" and "see you later" on their mobile phones, it's unlikely they would consider it a "linguistic miracle."
But that's exactly what Columbia linguistics professor John McWhorter called it in a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, California on Thursday.
Dr Liz Morrish, principal lecturer in linguistics at Nottingham Trent University, doesn't agree with Mr McWhorter that it is "a whole new language" based on speech. But she is impressed by its creativity.
"Language is creative all the time and it always has been," she said. "New media has enhanced that to a greater degree and young people have seized it, as is always the case, and developed a very creative and inventive way of writing.
"What I don't agree with is John McWhorter's idea that we now write in the way we speak because text speech is much more dependent on writing.
"Yes, it's an evolving form and a new form of writing but it presupposes that you have learned to write a fairly standard English before you can then abbreviate it so step one of texting is learning to write properly and step two is learning to abbreviate it."
According to Professor McWhorter, texting is "a linguistic miracle happening right under our noses".
He said the trick was realising the difference between written and spoken language.
"A whole new language has developed among our young people doing something as mundane as batting around when they're using their little devices," he said.
"Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk."
He illustrated his point with "LOL" (laugh out loud), which is now used to fill gaps in conversation.
He added: "When young people can switch between the language of text and the language of the rest of their society, it's actually a great thing because being bilingual is widely acknowledged to be good for your brain."
But Sarah Wilkinson, Trinity School's subject leader for English, was wary.
"I wouldn't disagree with the professor that it is a linguistic miracle because it shows language is constantly changing and evolving. However if kids want to speak like that I think as an educator I should be encouraging them to use standard English and I should be modelling an extensive vocabulary that they might not hear otherwise."
