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Harley Hahn's List of Abbreviations Used While Talking on the Net A great deal of communication on the Internet consists of people typing text to one another — in mail messages and Usenet articles, and while talking to other people using instant messaging, IRC, chat rooms, talk facilities and muds. In addition, people send messages to one another using text messaging on mobile phones. To save time and effort, there are a number of common abbreviations and acronyms used while communicating on the Net. I have collected the most important ones in the table below. Some of the abbreviations are used only in certain contexts. For example, you will generally see Objoke only in Usenet humor groups (where a person posting a message has included an "obligatory joke"), while BRB would be used when two people are chatting and one tells the other he must leave for a moment, but will "be right back". If you are a beginner, don't worry about the nuances — it won't take long for you to catch on.
Aside from abbreviations and acronyms, you will commonly see people use a smiley. This indicates that what the person is saying should not be taken as offensive. Here are the three most common smileys: :-) :) ;-) (To see the smiling faces, tilt your head sideways to the left. Notice that the last smiley is winking.) Use a smiley whenever you think you have said something that the other person might find offensive. For example: Don't worry, we can't all be smart and good- looking :-) Smileys are especially useful when you want to say something sardonic, such as a devastating observation, wrought with irony, that a lesser mind might interpret as criticism: Your dress is lovely. My mother used to have one just like it when she was a kid :-) Lists of Smileys
You will sometimes see <grin> or <g> used instead of a smiley. Thus, all of the following examples have the same meaning:
We can't all be smart and good-looking :-)
Although you will see many people use <grin>, my advice is to avoid it. Smileys are more abstract, and, hence, make you look subtle and intelligent. Typing <grin> just makes you look goofy.
Being a man, I understand how important it is to express your emotions, so please allow me to share. On the Net, there is a convention that, while talking, you put words that describe an emotion within angled brackets, < >, in order to set the words off from regular text. For example, say you are in a Web chat room talking with someone at work about the new artichoke crop in Venezuela. All of a sudden, the boss walks into your friend's office, so your friend types: BRB, boss <grumble> (BRB means "be right back".) You may also see asterisk characters * * used instead of < >. For instance, when your friend gets back to the keyboard, he types:
Gotta leave *sigh*.
To which you reply: ROFL! (ROFL means "rolling on the floor laughing".)
— hint for parents and teachers — You will notice that a few of the words in list below are swear words. I have included them for two reasons. First, people really do talk like this on the Net, so don't get excited. Second, I want you to know what your kids mean when they use these abbreviations.
© All contents Copyright 2009, Harley Hahn
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