Acronyms Galore

[terryg]

The Internet acronyms came for two reasons:
- many were being send via phones, etc where spelling out repetitive groups of words was laborious. We haven't talked in this thread yet about the ones that the kids added (BFF= best friend forever) or some of them that would not pass the 10 year old daughter test on this forum. I promise you that abbreviating the latter is much more socially acceptable.
- I took typing in high school and developed from there. On a good day, I can go at between 80-100wpm. In many cases, people who post to forums have no typing skills at all and prefer to "hunt and peck" for a s few letters as possible.
- for some of us (myself included) spelling has always been a challenge. Acronyms help me to limit the public display of my inadequacies.

And some were in use before cell phones and internet.

TTYL = Talk to you later.

In the same vein, one of my personal favorites - used WAYYYYY before the interents:

TTFN =

Tot Tot For Now

[Abraham]

chasfm11,

Thanks for education regarding acronyms - makes sense.

We all have our pet peeves (my list grows longer as I age, grumble, grumble...) and the overuse of acronyms is one of them, especially when I see them used as stale witticisms.

Told ya I was cranky...

[Commander Cody]

TYODR

[chasfm11]

Terryg, you are absolutely correct that some of the abbreviations have been around a long time. It was the Internet and then messaging that really brought them into the general public's awareness and more general use.

[Commander Cody]

The TYODR = TEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER RULE. In the first five posts on this thread it was left in the wind. I think that the post involved should be deleted.

[Dave2]

Too many TLAs in here...

To amend USA1's list:
FTF = Failure to Find (the gun... he'd forgotten it at home).
BG = Bat Guano, an ingredient in black powder.