My brother’s text messages can read like fragments of an ancient code: “hru,” “wyd,” “plz” – truncated, cryptic and never quite satisfying to receive. I’ll often find myself second-guessing whether “gr8” means actual excitement or whether it’s a perfunctory nod.

This oddity has nagged at me for years, so I eventually embarked upon a series of studies with fellow researchers Sam Maglio and Yiran Zhang. I wanted to know whether these clipped missives might undermine genuine dialogue, exploring the unspoken signals behind digital shorthand.

As we gathered data, surveyed people and set up experiments, it became clear that those tiny shortcuts – sometimes hailed as a hallmark of efficient communication – undermine relationships instead of simplifying them.

Short words lead to feeling shortchanged

Most people type “ty” and “brb” – for “thank you” and “be right back” – without batting an eye.

In a survey we conducted of 150 American texters ages 18 to 65, 90.1 per cent reported regularly using abbreviations in their daily messages, and 84.2 per cent believed these shortcuts had either a positive effect or no meaningful impact on how the messages were perceived by the recipients.

But our findings suggest that the mere inclusion of abbreviations, although seemingly benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter chops words down to their bare consonants, recipients sense a lack of effort, which causes them to disengage.

It’s a subtle but pervasive phenomenon that most people don’t intuit.

We started with controlled lab tests, presenting 1,170 participants ages 15 to 80 with one of two near-identical text exchanges: one set sprinkled with abbreviations, the other fully spelled out. In every single scenario, participants rated the abbreviating sender as less sincere and far less worthy of a reply.

The deeper we dug, the more consistent the pattern became.

Whether people were reading messages about weekend plans or major life events, the presence of truncated words and phrases such as “plz,” “sry” or “idk” for “please,” “sorry” or “I don’t know” made the recipients feel shortchanged.

The phenomenon didn’t stop with strangers. In more experiments, we tested whether closeness changed the dynamic. If you’re texting a dear friend or a romantic partner, can you abbreviate to your heart’s content?

Evidently not. Even people imagining themselves chatting with a longtime buddy reported feeling a little put off by half-spelled words, and that sense of disappointment chipped away at how authentic the interaction felt.

From Discord to dating apps

Still, we had nagging doubts: Might this just be some artificial lab effect?

We wondered whether real people on real platforms might behave differently. So we took our questions to Discord, a vibrant online social community where people chat about everything from anime to politics. More importantly, Discord is filled with younger people who use abbreviations like it’s second nature.

We messaged random users asking them to recommend TV shows to watch. One set of messages fully spelled out our inquiry; the other set was filled with abbreviations. True to our lab results, fewer people responded to the abbreviated ask. Even among digital natives – youthful, tech-savvy users who are well versed in the casual parlance of text messaging – a text plastered with shortcuts still felt undercooked.

If a few missing letters can sour casual chats, what happens when love enters the equation? After all, texting has become a cornerstone of modern romance, from coy flirtations to soul-baring confessions. Could “plz call me” inadvertently jeopardise a budding connection? Or does “u up?” hint at more apathy than affection? These questions guided our next foray, as we set out to discover whether the swift efficiency of abbreviations might actually short-circuit the delicate dance of courtship and intimacy.

Our leap into the realm of romance culminated on Valentine’s Day with an online speed dating experiment.

We paired participants for timed “dates” inside a private messaging portal, and offered half of them small incentives to pepper their replies with abbreviations such as “ty” instead of “thank you.”

When it came time to exchange contact information, the daters receiving abbreviation-heavy notes were notably more reluctant, citing a lack of effort from the other party. Perhaps the most eye-opening evidence came from a separate study running a deep analysis of hundreds of thousands of Tinder conversations. The data showed that messages stuffed with abbreviations such as “u” and “rly” scored fewer overall responses and short-circuited conversations.

It’s the thought that counts

We want to be clear: We’re not campaigning to ban “lol.” Our research suggests that a few scattered abbreviations don’t necessarily torpedo a friendship. Nor does every one of the many messages sent to many people every day warrant the full spelling-out treatment. Don’t care about coming across as sincere? Don’t need the recipient to respond? Then by all means, abbreviate away.

Instead, it’s the overall reliance on condensed phrases that consistently lowers our impression of the sender’s sincerity. When we type “plz” a dozen times in a conversation, we risk broadcasting that the other person isn’t worth the extra letters. The effect may be subtle in a single exchange. But over time, it accumulates.

If your ultimate goal is to nurture a deeper connection – be it with a friend, a sibling or a prospective date – taking an extra second to type “thanks” might be a wise investment.

Abbreviations began as a clever workaround for clunky flip phones, with its keypad texting – recall tapping “5” three times to type the letter “L” – and strict monthly character limits. Yet here we are, long past those days, still trafficking in “omg” and “brb,” as though necessity never ended.

After all of those studies, I’ve circled back to my brother’s texts with fresh eyes. I’ve since shared with him our findings about how those tiny shortcuts can come across as half-hearted or indifferent. He still fires off “brb” in half his texts, and I’ll probably never see him type “I’m sorry” in full. But something’s shifting – he typed “thank you” a few times, even threw in a surprisingly heartfelt “hope you’re well” the other day.

It’s a modest shift, but maybe that’s the point: Sometimes, just a few more letters can let someone know they really matter.

David Fang, PhD Student in Marketing, Stanford University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.