linguistic:paraphrasing
Records and competition

The Guinness Book of World Records has a world record for text messaging, currently held by Sonja Kristiansen of Norway. Kristiansen keyed in the official text message, as established by Guinness, in 37.28 seconds. The message is, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human." In 2005, the record was held by a 24-year-old Scottish man, Craig Crosbie, who completed the same message in 48 seconds, beating the previous time by 19 seconds. The Book of Alternative Records lists Chris Young of Salem, Oregon as the world-record holder for the fastest 160-character text message where the contents of the message are not provided ahead of time. His record of 62.3 seconds was set on 23 May 2007.

Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand currently holds the world record for the fastest blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160-letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set on 17 November 2007, beating the old record of 1-minute 26 seconds set by an Italian in September 2006. Andrew Acklin of Ohio is credited with the world record for most text messages sent or received in a single month, with 200,052. His accomplishments were first in the World Records Academy and later followed up by Ripley's Believe It Or Not 2010: Seeing Is Believing. He has been acknowledged by The Universal Records Database for the most text messages in a single month; however, this has since been broken twice and as of 2010 was listed as 566607 messages by Fred Lindgren.

In January 2010, LG Electronics sponsored an international competition, the LG Mobile World Cup, to determine the fastest pair of texters. The winners were a team from South Korea, Ha Mok-min and Bae Yeong-ho. On 6 April 2011, SKH Apps released an iPhone app, iTextFast, to allow consumers to test their texting speed and practice the paragraph used by Guinness Book of World Records. As of 2011, best time listed on Game Center for that paragraph is 34.65 seconds.