This article investigates continuities and changes in abbreviation practices from late Middle English to twenty-first-century digital platforms. Adopting a diachronic perspective and lexicological framework, it quantitatively analyses frequency patterns across fifteenth-century memoranda, letters and administrative receipts, seventeenth-century letters and depositions, late nineteenth-century letters, early twentieth-century letters and a subcorpus of WhatsApp instant messages dating from 2018–19. It then presents analyses of the frequencies of various abbreviation forms, such as clippings, and abbreviated lexemes, such as their use for names, over time. The article then provides a qualitative analysis of these lexeme categories over the centuries, with a focus on specific examples. Major changes to overall abbreviation density across time are identified. The forms of abbreviation also go through major change, but the types of lexemes that are abbreviated stay more consistent over time. For example, abbreviations being used for closed-class function words such as the and that are dominant from the earliest data we have looked at to the present day. Overall, the study demonstrates how situating new media abbreviation practices within a historical continuum can enhance our understanding of them.

本文研究了从中世纪晚期到二十一世纪数字平台的缩写实践的连续性和变化。采用历时视角和词汇学框架，定量分析了 15 世纪备忘录、信件和行政收据、17 世纪信件和证词、19 世纪末信件、20 世纪早期信件以及 WhatsApp 即时消息约会子语料库的频率模式2018-19 年。然后，它分析了各种缩写形式（例如剪报）和缩写词位（例如它们在名称中的使用）随时间的变化的频率。然后，本文对几个世纪以来这些词位类别进行了定性分析，重点关注具体示例。确定了随时间推移总体缩写密度的主要变化。缩写的形式也经历了重大变化，但缩写的词位类型随着时间的推移保持更加一致。例如，用于闭类功能词（例如the和 the ）的缩写从我们查看的最早数据到今天一直占主导地位。总体而言，该研究表明，将新媒体缩写实践置于历史连续体中可以如何增强我们对它们的理解。