To send a text message to an email address, when addressing the recipient of the text message, instead of entering a phone number, enter an email address. For a Sprint text message being sent to one or more email addresses, the number of characters in the longest email address plus one will be subtracted from the total number of characters you are allowed to put into the body of the message. Spaces and symbols also count towards the total 160. For Nextel text messaging, the same rules apply, but the limit is 500 characters.

As an example, if you text person@domain.com, that gives you 160-18=142 characters available for your message on a Sprint phone, or 500-18=482 characters available on a Nextel phone.