W USA Fund Organization

Vanity Plates Were the Original Text Message?

In some ways strange and funny vanity license plates were the original text message. They are short, almost never sweet and, unless the traffic is really bad, just a twinkle between lane changes. And the six to eight letter or digit limit makes Twitter look verbose! The formal word for this kind of communication is a ‘rebus’ meaning a visual number/letter combination that can be sounded into a single word. The best gallery of funny license plates can be found at the eponymous “R8PL8Z” dot com. Our favorites are ZYONARA for the Japanese import, DAMNIML8 for the ever behind schedule who hope the cops can take a joke, and 50 BAIT for those who can’t.