What do you use for the past tense of "to text"?

[Signedcopy]

Why on earth would it be "text" not "texted"? As in "He text his friend" instead of "he texted his friend".

I know there are bigger issues but what the heck?

‘I texted you’ or ‘I did text you’

I say texted but I am old. And am a weirdo who does a lot of her socialising in written form.

People have followed the pattern of the x or k sound having a t sound for its past form (flexed, sexed, xeroxed, faxed, maxed, mixed, fixed, boxed, wrecked, shacked, packed, lacked....) and fitted the word that already sounds like that into the group.

Most people talk a lot more than they write.

I'm pretty sure none of them thinks that "of" is acting as an auxiliary verb. It's really not that deep. They simply think that the phrase is "might of" beause that's what they've heard.

There are all sorts of oddities of idiom ("whose is whose" for example...) so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that this is another one.

But that's a noun not a verb.

Surely texted with ed denoting past tense.

I suspect it's the same origins as "write me" instead of "write to me".

But no one blinks if you say "call me".

Solaris? COBOL predates that hugely! (1959) and yes I programmed in it. Not earning a living directly, but teaching it. Thanks for asking. 😀

Three things:

1. It was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC, designed by Grace Hopper." THE Commodore Grace Hopper (female) who I saw give a memorial lecture at Thames Polytechnic. Look her up, kids. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper Brilliant woman.
2. "COBOL is verbose and uses over 300 reserved words compared to the succinct and mathematically inspired syntax of other languages." Which is maybe why I liked it. Don't read too much George Eliot when young, kids.
3. "COBOL code is split into four divisions (identification, environment, data, and procedure)" Apparently an interview question for COBOL programmers was "what are the 4 divisions of a COBOL program?". If you could remember them, you were a useless student. If you actually used it, you took an existing program and edited it, intuitively got on with it, and couldn't name the divisions....

I say texted, DP says text. It does my nut in, but keep my mouth shut since I complained and DP quickly reeled off a nice long list of verbs that are the same in both past and present tense.

For example, we sat we cut something up, not that we cutted something up. Not unless it's cutted up pear anyway.

Texted.

I once had an Australian flatmate who thought the present tense of “to text” was “texses”, as in “Every time he texses me…” Infuriating.

It was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC, designed by Grace Hopper." THE Commodore Grace Hopper (female) who I saw give a memorial lecture at Thames Polytechnic. Look her up, kids. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper Brilliant woman.

+1. 😀 They named a lecture hall after her ....

Texted.

Haha, yes I could never remember the names of those divisions. I worked with COBOL 74 and a version that was more modern - you could do coloured screens. Found it Microfocus cobol.

Love it! Us old techies should remind the yoof what it was like back then.

As for coloured screens, I remember using green CRT terminals, and then one day I saw some scandi ones with ORANGE text. Mind blowing!

You are using text as a noun in your sentence. The OP is talking about when it is being used as a past tense verb

"I texted them" obviously!

Text, texted just doesn't sound right

Oh, I know COBOL predates Solaris/Unix, but I'd just had someone telling me it was dead. (Not on my CV it's not.)

I've done a talk on women pioneers in computing (and probably wittered on about it/ its contents on MN more than once.) I like to drop little facts in at work from time to time, especially if they're being too male.

Anyway, this modern texting stuff, definitely texted.

Texted.

Agreed - And don't get me started on handwriting! Not only do young people not know how to write, they can't even read it! 😱

Text or texted

But you wouldn't say I cutted a pear.

Boxed set is unhinged

Quite. I love correcting others' grammar as much as the next guy but we can't pretend there immutable conjugation rules in English. I think both text and texted are fine. Bring on the Mandarin Chinese linguistic revolution and we will never need to conjugate again!

I've noticed in some of the earlier Enid Blyton stories, people will always 'telephone to' somebody; but in later stories, the 'to' is absent - which I found interesting.

Some people would say just that

www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/1301196-If-my-3yo-had-access-to-AIBU