So, are they ducks, or not?

In a crossword puzzle I was working this morning there was a clue ("note regarding a debt") the answer to which was IOU, as in, I owe you some money. It seemed to me that I O U fits right in with the current sort of text-speak that uses single letters for words, but it was centuries ahead of its time.  The first known use, according to at least two dictionaries, was in or around 1795, and someone pointed out that I O U can be found in a mid-19th-century novel by Dickens.

So much of text-speak involves acronyms, such as YOYO for "you're on your own" and the ubiquitous LOL ("laughing out loud"). Also nothing new. ASAP has been used in business for decades, and any genealogist whose research antedates the Internet knows what SASE means ("self-addressed stamped envelope").

There is also the use of numbers for words, as in B4 for "before." At least 50 years ago, somebody wrote in my high school yearbook, "2 good 2 be 4gotten."   So that's not new either.

The single-letter words are probably my favorite.

Where R U going
Home
Y
2 P
K

And I won't even guess how long this has been around:

A B, U C M ducks?
L M R N O ducks.
O S M R ducks. I C M P N.
L I B.  M R ducks.

And with that, all I can say is YOYO.