IMHO, you'll be ROTFL!
A guide to understanding Email stupidity
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By: Cube Domain
Created: October 22, 2005
Licensed To: Astahost

The Internet is, in the most general sense, quite stupid actually. Inhibitions are unknown, ignorance could not be more prevalent, and idiocy is the language of the majority of Internet users. They’ve even gone as far as inventing their own acronyms. You may use this guide to comprehend the language found mainly in email and message boards.

Warning: Don’t use the acronyms here in Astahost. You may get banned.

To start, here are the most common ones:
BTW: By the way
IM(H)O: In my (humble) opinion
LOL: Laughing out loud
LMAO: Laughing my --- off
RO(T)FL: Rolling on the floor laughing
OM(F)G: Oh, my ----ing God
G2G: Got to go
STFU: Shut the ---- up

It’s quite sad, really. I’m not going to list all of the acronyms, it’s way too depressing for me. Feel free to add some you know.

Well, you won't really get banned for using those common acronyms... But you might if you use "AOL speak" (I'm not discriminating AOL users) for almost every word in your sentence and make you post completely illegible.

I think that if you use the Internet more, you'll get rid of the habit of writing like that. But, there are always new people to the Internet, so these acronyms may stay alive forever... Well, or at least until the "trend" dies.

Hahah this is very true. My teacher tells her class that it's not helpful to people's vocabulary and spelling because now you're mixed in to this world of false spellings. I wonder if any of my friends use this in their writing :S

Oh, the acronyms! I hate them, but sometimes I don't catch myself using them and - arrgh - they actually go out in forums like this or in e-mails.

But what annoys me even more is the fact that people seem to think that it's okay to send me allegedly "professional" e-mails (i.e. asking me to do some freelance work for them) filled with "text message shortcuts." "Would u like 2..." for example. It's okay in a cell phone text message (because the number of characters is so limited for each message), but it's an E-MAIL! Type it out! It's not that hard.

Actually, I find that sort of "jargon" just as annoying... as you noticed, I like to keep my writing/typing very clean and grammatical. I'm not anal about it, but it's a bit of a peeve when some go so far as to use terms I don't even know of!

Well, who cares, right? I mean, YTI HFISK SJP !

(The above supposed jargon did not actually mean a sing thing; I took about 3 seconds making it up.)

Hating abbreviated terms since 1989,
HTML_Guru

Well sometimes iti is usefull, but when people start talking only with smiles and lol lol and stuff it is really annoying, I could add one more:

IIRC - If I Remember Correctly.
ASAP - As fast as Possible.

I think I got those right.

I suppose I can understand where you guys are coming from. As someone who doesn't like those abbreviated terms much, I share some of your sentiments.

But if I don't like something, does that mean it's a bad thing? Is everyone using these acronyms an imbecile? Does my employinga form of speach agreed upon as the mainstream qualify me for condemning other forms made for convenience, effeciency in certain circumstances, or whatever?

Well, I suppose these could be viewed as somewhat philosophical concepts, so there's no real need to go into an exhausting discussion about them, since this sure will sidetrack the thread. I just thought they were worth the brief mention.

I personally don't have a big problem with acronyms. I don't frequently use them, since my writing style doesn't normally require them. But if I'm talking to a friend, in a chat room, or to a person who's comfortable with them, then I would certainly use them, although perhaps sporadically.

Andway, maybe we can something out of this thread other than simply expressing our opinions, which is certainly a decent goal in itself . How about those of us who use acronyms tell us why they do, and those who don't the same. Yes, I know that's what we've been doing. The new thing is, since I'm sure there would fanatics on either camp, why don't we discuss ways which we think might help either spread or eliminate the use of acronyms (depending on your stand)? It might be interesting, might it not?

Actually I can see that there are cases when such acronyms are useful and they are as follows:

When attempting to enter a text message into a cellular telephone. If you have ever tried to compose a message with a cell phone then you would appreciate any shorcut that there is available.

For those who still pay for the internet usage on an hourly basis anything that same them time would be used to keep from paying a tremendous bill, but I would imagine that now days just about all who use the internet then they have a plan that doesn't limit time before adding charges.

I can see it in a chat room especially for those that are not the fastest typist in the world, otherwise you would be waiting forever for them to make any kind of point at all. The use of acronyms for those people should be almost required.

Also when sending an SMS to a cell phone where you are limited to a given amout of characters in the message then I could see their usage, you can't be very verbose when you are limited to 255 characters in a message then an acronym is almost a necessity.

But in forums where you are merely responding to another post or creating a new topic then I really don't see a whole lot of use for them. In my opinion when posting in a forum ther more you put to a message especially if it concerns a problem the more likely it is that someone can actually help you with said problem.

You see many posts on this site that really leave alot to be desired asking for help. A post like Need help with site (as a subject) followed by a message about not being able to format the page a certain way and then not giving a link or anything else they will say in the body of the message does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix it or to help them. All you can respond with is like ask if they could at least provide a link so you could at least view the HTML source and get a vague idea as to what they have going on.

Here's an acronym MWPDD which of course means My Web Page Dont Do which even if you knew the MWPDD you still couldn't help such a poster especially with nothing else to go on.

Ah well I guess the acronyms are gonna hang around and there will be more added but those should be left to chat rooms and not forums, but of course this is just my own opinion.

Personally, I don't know what's worse- the acronyms that are found in emails (chat, I believe, is a separate story entirely) or the way some people "talk" in emails. Whatever happened to good punctuation, full sentences, and words like you, to or too, and are were typed out in full? I mean, I understand the occasional "u" in a casual email to a friend, but I have a feeling that the people who do that don't really care about how they come across to people, especially professionals.

I mean, I recently started putting out a profile on some dating sites, and most of the people I've recieved replies from have been articulate. But there's just been a couple where it's all "u r the 1 4 me" and baloney like that. I don't know about you, but for me, that makes the other person come across as lazy and borderline stupid, because he doesn't seem to care enough to put the effort into typing concisely and accurately to try for a better chance at me being interested in talking more with him. Anybody else find this laziness in typing a horrifying new trend or is it just me?

Well, I don't know why you're posting this. There is already a similar thread with lots and lots more words:

http://www.astahost.com/gamers-dictionary-t5733.html

-=jeroen=-