The first PhD in text messaging was not undertaken by Caroline Tagg at the University of Birmingham (The week in higher education, 13 August).
In 2006, I examined a PhD by Thiresia Spilioti of the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King's College London entitled "Text messages and social interaction: genre, norms and sociability in Greek SMS". I was sufficiently inspired by the experience that I taught myself to text.
Mike Baynham, University of Leeds.