Text message analysis is becoming a powerful tool in solving crime cases

In February 2008, linguistic evidence contributed to the conviction of David Hodgson in the murder of Jenny Nicholl.

The case highlighted how people choose their own text language "rules" - which they tend to use throughout all their messages.

Forensic linguists showed that text messages sent from Jenny's phone after she went missing had a style that was more similar to that of David Hodgson.

Jenny Nicholls' body was never found, but the jury accepted the prosecution's view that Hodgson had been sending texts on her mobile after her presumed death and found him guilty of murder.

The case is illustrative of what can be achieved by analyzing mobile messages, said Dr Tim Grant from the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University.

He is speaking here in Liverpool at the British Association Science Festival.

Identifying the author of an anonymous text message might seem like an impossible challenge as they are typically very short and fragmented.

Traditionally, forensic linguists use a descriptive approach.

They demonstrate that there are several stylistic features that are consistently used in messages where they know the author.

For example, Jenny Nicholl used "my" and "myself" while David Hodgson often adopted Yorkshire dialect, using "me" and "meself."

Forensic linguists look to see whose style is most similar to that used in any disputed texts.

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1. What is forensic stylistics?
2. What are the main types of questioned authorship problems?
3. What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches?
4. What is stylometry?
5. How is question writing analysis accomplished?
6. What does this analysis result in?
7. What is author identification based on?

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