ALERT: YOUR NEXT TEXT IS ABOUT TO CHANGE EVERYTHING  

You over there, with your index finger hovering over the “send” button: Before you proceed any further, please note that your next text will make or break this relationship.

Before that text goes zooming irrevocably to the recipient’s phone, choose your words wisely. Do you really want to “hang out,” or would you rather “meet up”?

Lest you unwittingly alter the course of this relationship, remember that whether you write “hey” or “hi” will determine if he even likes you.

And is this really a “party” you’re going to, or is it more of a general “get-together”? Don’t be a liar!

Before you press that “send” button, consider the whereabouts of the recipient. Could he be at dinner with his parents? Walking his dog? If you disturb an important activity, you just may garner his eternal hatred. Then again, could he be on a date? Maybe if you intervene just in time, you could occupy some prime real estate in his head!

But how long has it been since you last spoke? If you’re desperate enough to text someone a day after your last meeting, you’ll probably grow old alone save a few feline companions.

Since it can be tricky to determine which words to use, read various drafts to yourself. Then read them aloud. Then read them to a friend.

Then conduct a multivariate survey on how each of your friends would react upon receiving different iterations of your text, and use it to construct a sentiment analysis of each emoticon.

Then run an A/B testing campaign blasting different versions of this text to your Twitter followers and analyzing your engagement metrics. Track your click-through rate based on timing as well as word choice, since an innocent invitation at 12 noon can become a booty call at 12 midnight.

If your recipient is a Twitter user, you may need to leverage other channels to ensure everyone but the recipient gets the text. One option is to dedicate a separate web page to each variant and compare traffic with Google Analytics.

And while you’re at it, you’d might as well collect all your data in a relational database for SQL analysis. Then again, by the time you get the software up and running, you may have missed your window of opportunity.

Either way, only once your data is statistically significant should you release your muscles and let that finger descend to that phone.

Although you’ve already revised this text 13 times, replacing “some time” with “soon” and “do you want” with “would you like” and drawing other imperative distinctions, recall your last unanswered text. If you’d just phrased it a little differently, you could be married by now.