Our popular Internet e-mail, as well as other online communication like chat rooms and instant messaging, is informal, quick, and easy. Everybody loves communication that is short, concise, and to the point. The shorter the better. As a matter of a fact, in the name of brevity, you will often see a string of abbreviations, called acronyms, used in electronic communications. This easy-to-learn shorthand works like a simple code and makes communicating electronically more fun.
If you know what NASA or IRS refers to, then you are already familiar with acronyms. E-mail acronyms are similar to regular acronyms—they are words formed from the capitalized letters of each of the first letters of a descriptive phrase or from a combination of letters that represents the long words. An acronym is actually a type of abbreviation. Although you sometimes see acronyms or abbreviations written with periods after each letter e.g., U.S.A., periods are not used in online acronyms.
Acronym itself seems a funny word…maybe one of those words that are a little hard to remember. Guess what? Someone has made an acronym of the word acronym. There are over seventeen suggested meanings for the word “acronym” at an Acronym Web Site.
Acronyms Add Enjoyment
Understanding acronyms will add to your enjoyment of online communication. They seem to lighten up the content. Using acronyms is fun. It is like being a member of a club and knowing all the secret codes.
Let’s look at some fun ways to use this Internet shorthand.
Farewell
A whole classification of acronyms for saying goodbye and farewell has been created, a kind of online closing. Why not try some of these when writing your next online letter or the next time you leave a chat room:
BBL Be Back Later
BFN Bye For Now
BRB Be Right Back
TTFN Ta Ta For Now
TTYL Talk To You Later
Encouragement and Congratulations
Want to urge someone on or send them a word of encouragement? Try this well-known acronym:
WTG Way To Go
Interjections
Many of these interjections can add expression and personality to your messages:
BTW By The Way
FWIW For What It’s Worth
IAE In Any Event
IMO In My Opinion
IOW In Other Words
JFYI Just For Your Information
OTOH On The Other Hand
WRT With Respect To
Chat Room Talk
It is easy to tell this acronym was developed from chat room conversation.
PMFJI Pardon Me For Jumping In
Laughing
Are you enjoying these acronyms? How about some ones about laughing?
LOL Laughing Out Loud
ROTFL Rolling On The Floor Laughing
Common Responses
Some of the common response acronyms seem somewhat flippant and even a little sarcastic. Quite a few of them originated from chat room “banter.” Perhaps because online communications have no face-to-face contact, it is too easy to overlook the feelings of your reader. So use these common responses with sensitivity:
HSIK How Should I Know
NBD No Big Deal
NOYB None Of Your Business
OIC Oh, I See
OTL Out To Lunch
TIC Tongue In Cheek
FAQR (that’s a new acronym I just coined for “For a quick review”), why not join in the acronym fun. To speed up your messages, pepper them lightly with the appropriate acronyms, but use them sparingly (no one wants to have to spend hours cracking an over-coded message). Remember to use acronyms with sensitivity. And last but not least, be sure to get them right, otherwise, you may have family and friends ROTFL over your attempt to say BFN when you typed NBD instead.
Note: The other form of Net shorthand is an emoticon. Emoticons are keyboard characters that resemble human facial expressions. Emoticons are used to convey emotion or state of mind. For a detailed explanation on emotions, my How To Interpret Emoticons will give you all the details.
