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 many initialisms and acronyms used in electronic communications. Both of these are forms of abbreviations that are created from letters from a word or a series of words. Initialisms like FBI and HTML do not necessarily form words. In the strictest sense of the word, acronyms can be pronounced as a word. Examples of acronyms would be NASA and NATO. However, you will find that in much common jargon, all of these types of abbreviations are referred to as acronyms. 

 No matter what you call them, this easy-to-learn shorthand works like a simple code and makes communicating electronically more fun. Abbreviations are often used in email and they are definitely a part of the new text messaging world that is all the rage with youngsters. 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. 

Understanding abbreviations will add to your enjoyment of online communication. They seem to lighten up the content. Using abbreviations 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 abbreviations 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 abbreviation:

 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 abbreviation was developed from chat room conversation.

PMFJI                                    Pardon Me For Jumping In             

Laughing
Are you enjoying these abbreviations? 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

Text Messaging
If you want to keep up with the kids in text messaging, there is a lot to learn. While in email and online, abbreviations are often capitalized, text messages are always in lower case. The number 2 is used for to or too, The number 4 is used for the word for. The letter r stands for are. The letters yr or ur stand for your. While ily stands for I love you, 143 means the same thing. There are a lot of sexual innuendos and parental alerts in the text messaging that the kids use. If you need to learn what it all means check out Net Lingo's acronym and text messaging lists .

FAQR (that's a new abbreviation I just coined for "For a quick review"), why not join in the fun. To speed up your messages, pepper them lightly with the appropriate abbreviations, but use them sparingly (no one wants to have to spend hours cracking an over-coded message). Remember to use abbreviations 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 Smiley's Can Be Fun will give you all the details.