Atrocious acronyms.
For those of you with busy lives or a ridiculously short attention span, I'll summarise the rather lengthy post below in a few short 'n simple sentences.
Acronyms? I bloody fucking well hate 'em. Clear enough for you?
From the first time I came into contact, five or six years ago, with the popular acronyms so often found on fora and in chatrooms, until this very moment sitting here, typing this, I've detested them beyond belief. The entire idea behind these abbreviated abominations has never ceased to baffle me and, truth be told, offends the English major in me.
I assume you all know what I'm talking about, but, for the uninitiated (lucky bastards), I'll explain. I am talking about a phenomenon found in nearly every online form of expression, albeit on discussion fora, in chatrooms, on blogs or while IM-ing (the latter two of which are horrid abbreviations all by themselves); this phenomenon I speak of is the tendency to abbreviate words, and thereby brutally rape the rather lovely English language.
Examples of this blatant abuse are LOL (Laughing Out Loud), ROTFL (Rolling On The Floor Laughing) and LMAO (Laughing My Ass Off), but also WTF (What The Fuck) and How R U (How Are You) or any other term in which entire words are replaced by single letters or numbers.
I mean, ROTFL? Come on! Whatever happened to "Hey, that's bloody funny, mate!"? Or, if that's too much work for you, a simple and effective "Haha!". Less work (less letters to type), and immeasurably less ridiculous.
In my opinion, the use of such acronyms betrays a rather poor grasp of the English language; to me, by using these abbreviations, you openly state that your knowledge of the language is not nearly sufficient enough to properly express yourself, and therefore you reach back to inferior solutions such as these.
It's coarse, it's crude, it's anything but elegant, it's tacky, it's ugly, it's unrefined and it comes off as highly unsophisticated. It's even worse than the bloody smiley.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do not judge people who use acronyms, not in the slightest; if you want to use them, feel free. But, and I'm being painfully honest here, it is much more difficult for me to take a piece of text as a whole seriously when it's interspersed with LOL's, WTF's and LMAO's. The rest of the text can be highly informative, intellectually stimulating, argumentative and perhaps even hilarious, but all these good aspects of a text are almost immediately negated if and when I stumble upon these horrid acronyms.
So, please, people of the world, hear my plea - when expressing yourselves (and by god, do express yourselves), take the extra few minutes, and go the full distance.
In short: just stop it, will you? You with me?
Cheers
Acronyms? I bloody fucking well hate 'em. Clear enough for you?
From the first time I came into contact, five or six years ago, with the popular acronyms so often found on fora and in chatrooms, until this very moment sitting here, typing this, I've detested them beyond belief. The entire idea behind these abbreviated abominations has never ceased to baffle me and, truth be told, offends the English major in me.
I assume you all know what I'm talking about, but, for the uninitiated (lucky bastards), I'll explain. I am talking about a phenomenon found in nearly every online form of expression, albeit on discussion fora, in chatrooms, on blogs or while IM-ing (the latter two of which are horrid abbreviations all by themselves); this phenomenon I speak of is the tendency to abbreviate words, and thereby brutally rape the rather lovely English language.
Examples of this blatant abuse are LOL (Laughing Out Loud), ROTFL (Rolling On The Floor Laughing) and LMAO (Laughing My Ass Off), but also WTF (What The Fuck) and How R U (How Are You) or any other term in which entire words are replaced by single letters or numbers.
I mean, ROTFL? Come on! Whatever happened to "Hey, that's bloody funny, mate!"? Or, if that's too much work for you, a simple and effective "Haha!". Less work (less letters to type), and immeasurably less ridiculous.
In my opinion, the use of such acronyms betrays a rather poor grasp of the English language; to me, by using these abbreviations, you openly state that your knowledge of the language is not nearly sufficient enough to properly express yourself, and therefore you reach back to inferior solutions such as these.
It's coarse, it's crude, it's anything but elegant, it's tacky, it's ugly, it's unrefined and it comes off as highly unsophisticated. It's even worse than the bloody smiley.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do not judge people who use acronyms, not in the slightest; if you want to use them, feel free. But, and I'm being painfully honest here, it is much more difficult for me to take a piece of text as a whole seriously when it's interspersed with LOL's, WTF's and LMAO's. The rest of the text can be highly informative, intellectually stimulating, argumentative and perhaps even hilarious, but all these good aspects of a text are almost immediately negated if and when I stumble upon these horrid acronyms.
So, please, people of the world, hear my plea - when expressing yourselves (and by god, do express yourselves), take the extra few minutes, and go the full distance.
In short: just stop it, will you? You with me?
Cheers
6 Comments:
LOL.. great post!! :P
Do you realize that you've been bitching about English language in general as of late?
You're just upset because you didn't know what ROTFALTIC meant. :P (teasing)
No, I hate most acronyms also.
The odd one is OK, but like anything else it can be abused somewhat.
I like my smilies, especially the animated ones as they add that wee extra dimension to my posts.
Online forums can be bad - don't get ME started on friggin mobile texting - now there's an abomination of a language!!
:)
I like to use BRB but it clearly has an advantage. LOL just makes people look like idiots.
How long do you think it would take before "Hey, that's bloody funny, mate!" became HTBFM?
Or said another way.
ILTUBRBBICHAA. LOLJMPLLI.
HLDYTIWTBHTBFMBHTBFM?
Arpit - I knew, just knew that someone would comment with both LOL and a smiley.
Snake - That so? When was the last time, then?
Libra - The fact that there are acronyms popping up of which the meaning isn't immediately clear is a very bad signal, I think.
Pep - OK is the exception (though, I much prefer 'okay').
Hay - You're mad. You're right, but also mad.
Cheers
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