Nowadays everyone from your baby brother to your grandpa texts on a regular basis. Since it's used by billions around the world, I figured I'd voice some of the things that need to be changed with how people text. This isn't aimed at anyone particularly or to attack people who do these things, these are just thoughts I've always had that have been highlighted over the years. I hope these strike a chord with many of you as well.

1. Not Texting Back

Everyone can relate to this one. When someone doesn't text you back for a substantial amount of time, especially if you know they aren't busy or have seen them elsewhere on social media, it can be really upsetting or frustrating. Sometimes you really are busy all day or are away from your phone, actually enjoying the real world (what a novel idea), but you're eventually going to come back to your phone and you should text back.

To go along with this, there's also the patented "respond-days-later-as-if-nothing-happened" person. You text this person a question on Monday and on Friday they send an answer with no apology, as if they texted you only a few minutes after you originally sent the message. Texting back late, or not at all, and the emotion that it elicits can usually be solved if you have an explanation that you were busy or something crazy happened or something like that. Even if there's something more going on or you just didn't text back, explain. If you don't want to talk to someone, tell them. Personally, I'd much rather know that someone doesn't like me or want to talk rather than dealing with the anxiety of not knowing what's going on. Enough on this point, just text back or be upfront with why you didn't or aren't texting back. This will avoid a lot of problems in the future and be more loving to people.

2. iPhone Read Receipts

People may disagree with me on this one, but I've always had my read receipts on. Some people don't like offending people if they can't reply right away or if they need to think about their response or something along those lines. I definitely can see where these arguments come from, but I feel like people should definitely have them on anyway.

If you're not being shady then you have nothing to hide. Don't use read receipts as a way of not replying to people and making it seem like you weren't ignoring them. As I said before, if there's some sort of issue, talk about it or voice what's going on. "Delivered" instead of "Read Yesterday" may save some hurt feelings at first, but a lack of communication and clarity will eventually lead to a worse outcome. I challenge you to turn them on and be accountable. If you can't text back right away, let them know you're busy or don't open up the text until you can.

3. Not Saying Enough

Texting in many cases is meant to be quicker and briefer than calling, but there is a line to be drawn. When someone writes a long message to you (as I often do), please reply to everything. If someone asks three questions or talk about a few different points, "Yeah" or "Haha" aren't sufficient answers. This really is a problem with real life as well, honestly. Someone can tell a gut-wrenching story and we're probably all guilty of only returning a "Wow" or "That's awesome, man." I could think of a million other parallels to this, but truly there should be an equal response. It's like an author writing a book and letting someone read it only to have the person say, "It was good." It's like someone pouring their heart out, asking for advice, and then you saying "I don't know" or "Just keep doing what you're doing." People deserve more than a quick, generic response.

4. Grammar and Text Writing

Texting isn't supposed to be like an MLA style essay, but we have to make texts clear and decently written. As an English-oriented person, I tend to always text well-crafted sentences and use full grammar and punctuation or, at least, write conversationally. Many people, (big surprise) don't do this at all. Look, I'm not asking for everything to be perfect. I'm all about abbreviations sometimes and text-speak, which can enhance conversation or be even more concise in expressing something at times, but usually this doesn't cut it. Above all, please put some commas and period in your messages and some capital letters at the beginning of sentences. If nothing else, this will drastically improve your communication. Without periods and capitalization, your whole text is one gross, run-on mass of characters.

I'm not sure who prefers a text like this: "yo whatup fam how are you I aint seen u in a minute yo i saw ya mom at the store she doing well these days we talked about your brothers i just got this new game u should come play at my crib later we gotta see that new movie 2 bro it jus came out 2day."

Without commas, your texts can mean completely different things as well. You've seen this everywhere on the internet, I'm sure, but it's a big deal. Don't let "When are we eating, dad?" become "When are we eating dad?"

I hope these change your perspective a little bit and lead to better texting and communication for us all. To summarize: be honorable, be conscious, and use your communication skills; these things will all help you and the people you text in the long run. Happy texting!