LONDON - Some of the greatest and longest works of English literature have been compressed into a few lines of text message for a revision scheme.
Hamlet's famous line, "To be or not to be, that is the question", becomes "2b? Nt2b? - ???".
The service is designed to help
English students revising for their exams and was backed by University College London's Professor John Sutherland. The scheme has been developed by student mobile service, dot mobile.
Other books which have been turned into text message summaries include Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charles Dickens' Bleak House.
Professor Sutherland said: "Whilst some may argue that Dickens is really too big a morsel to be swallowed by text, the 'Great Inimitable' himself began working life as a shorthand writer and he would, I suspect, have approved of the brevity if nothing else."
He said the service "amply demonstrates text's ability to fillet out the important elements in a plot. Take for example the ending to Jane Eyre - MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus. Was ever a climax better compressed?
"You could shrink the whole five-act text of Hamlet into a few thousand characters."
Dot mobile's "text book" service will be available from January 2006.
One book which will be available is John Milton's poem Paradise Lost:
"Devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war.pd'off wiv god so corupts man (md by god) wiv apel. Devl stays serpnt 4hole life&man ruind. Woe un2mnkind."
Translation: "The devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus and starts a war.
"He is angry with God and so corrupts man (who is made by God) with an apple.
"The devil remains as a serpent for the whole of his life and man is ruined. Woe unto mankind."
- NZPA
