There's 4 separate issues here:-

1) There's abbreviations. LOL=laughs out loud, etc, or smileys. This is data compression - getting your idea over in as few keystrokes as posible. And common usage weeds out the infrequently used ones, cos if the other person has to ask what it means, it's not compressing it any! So the common ones will stay, and the infrequent ones will die out.

2) There's colloquial/regional/accepted usage, eg. cos or bcos for because. See 1.

3) There's mistyping. Everyone does it, cos we're not all trained touch-typists. The only way round it is to keep an eye on the screen and a finger on the backspace key, and that's just a function of having more practice at typing.

4) There's ppl who can't spell in the first place. And for these guys, they'd be writing the same stuff with a pen and paper as in an email, so there's no difference.

So 1 and 2 are likely to be here for good. 3 is human frailty. And 4 is human incompetence which we should all be ready for. ;-)

Grab.