Here at the Hatchery, it\u2019s SNAFU once again, after a period of our schedules being FUBAR. For a while there, my waking thought each day was \u201cADIH\u201d. AFAIK we should be able to settle into a routine for a while\u2014and that\u2019s OK by me.<\/p>\n
Phone\u2019s ringing. BRB.<\/p>\n
Sorry \u2018bout that.<\/p>\n
Texting, Twitter, and instant communication in general have all created a need to say more in fewer characters. The solution? Use abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms. (There\u2019s a whole article <\/a>about the differences over at my technical writing website).<\/p>\n \u201cOK\u201d is possibly the most well-known and frequently-used abbreviation ever. There are many theories about its origin; the definitive one can be found here<\/a>. But search the wonderweb for a glossary of texting abbreviations and you\u2019ll find sites offering literally thousands. I won’t be trying to learn them\u2014most are too contrived for my taste. For example, \u201cBOCTAAE\u201d is \u201cbut of course there are always exceptions\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cCBARAAHP\u201d is another. \u201cCRAP\u201d seems to be a form of backronym (cheap, redundant assorted products). I could go on.<\/p>\n The love affair with abbreviations is not new though. The above-linked article on the definitive \u201cOK\u201d origin also reports on a trend that developed in Boston (Mass., USA) in 1838, where abbreviations such as \u201cGTDHD\u201d (give the devil his due) where used.<\/p>\n The invention and adoption of the telegraph spawned more abbreviations. \u201cSOS\u201d is far and away the most well-known of that category.<\/p>\n And now we have emojis, made official by the Oxford Dictionary in their 2015 Word of the Year<\/a>.<\/p>\n I wonder what wordy authors such as Charles Dickens and James Joyce would have thought of these trends? Would they have observed, \u201cROFLMAO\u201d or \u201cPIMPL\u201d, noted dismissively, \u201cDGAF\u201d, or taken a sterner approach, noting, \u201cFFS! HWGA. GMAB! Damned Yanks were doing this in 1838. ITIGTBS.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking of abbreviation, I realized last week that I should really be making shorter posts as \u201cbait\u201d for my longer ones. The quote, \u201cIf I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.\u201d is attributed to President Woodrow Wilson, although many earlier quotes express the same sentiment. I sincerely hope that the underlying principle doesn\u2019t apply to web posts. I suspect such hope is futile.<\/p>\n Meanings of abbreviations used in this post can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n G2G\u2014word count maximum reached.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here at the Hatchery, it\u2019s SNAFU once again, after a period of our schedules being FUBAR. For a while there, my waking thought each day was \u201cADIH\u201d. AFAIK we should be able to settle into a routine for a while\u2014and that\u2019s OK by me. Phone\u2019s ringing. BRB. Sorry \u2018bout that. Texting, Twitter, and instant communication in general have all created… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[664,172,173,174],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","tag-500words","tag-abbreviations","tag-emoji","tag-itigtbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}