Text Acronyms…….?
I have been having a back channel disagreement about someone regarding the use of acronyms such as lol, or lmao, or brb, etc.
This person calls it lazy, disappointing, and disgusting. And I know many many other adults that feel the same way.
The thing is, our children learned to do this from us, the adults. While I know most people didnt teach their kids to use lol and the others specfically, we (and I do mean all of us) have taught our children that acronyms are cool, useful, and acceptable.
Ever used these acronyms?
FBI
CIA
KFC
SCUBA
Yes, those are names of things. But do you really expect a child to understand the difference?
What about these, that our children are taught in school?
ROYGBIV (the order of the colors of the rainbow
PEMDAS (acronym for a phrase to remember the order of mathmatical operations in long equations.. please excuse my dear aunt sally, parenthesis first, next exponets, then multiplication and division in order, then addition and subtraction in order)
What about phrases like TGIF? This person claimed to not know what that means. For anyone who doesnt, its stands for Thank God Its Friday. TGIF is what ABC (I think it was abc) used to call their Friday night tv line up, and now there is a chain steak house called this.
What about RIP? or CYA?
What about at work? Most kids have worked in fast food at some point. Do you know when you order a soft taco at Taco Bell it goes into the comp as ‘sfbt’ standing for soft beef taco?
When I was an emergency dispatcher, a car accident is an mva standing for motor vehicle accident. A heart attack is an mi, standing for micardial infarction, which is the medical term for a heart attack. Or DOA for dead on arrival.
When I worked in retail we had a ton of acronyms to remember the order of colors or whatever else.
Or what about medical? A bone marrow transplant is a bmt. Magnetic resonance imaging is called MRI. Or what about ct (I can never remember what ct stands for). Or a cbc stands for complete blood count.
This is a pet peeve of mine. And to make this post a valid post, here is the question
With the amount of acronyms adults use in daily life, how can you call children lazy for applying the same techniques to their own life?
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Tags: Text
adults are mean and don’t let kids have fun :’(
they wont have to learn all that till over 13…..i dk what theyre doing either like ipods….xboxes what are those??
I have no problem with using abbreviations that have been accepted for many years. I work in the medical field and yes, we do use a lot of abbreviations (CT Scan stands for computed tomography scan).
What I do mind is that when asking questions or expressing opinions here on Yahoo Answers, people seem to think that it’s okay to use the letter ‘r’ for ‘are’ and the letter ‘u’ for ‘you’ or ‘y’ for ‘why’.
It just bothers me that a person could just as easily type out the words ‘are’ or ‘you’ or ‘why’. I guess I don’t feel this is acceptable abbreviations.
Great argument. It’s not laziness, but in fact a useful tool for people who work together/socialize together, as long as there is mutual understanding.
But acronyms can easily get out of hand. I used to work for a multinational corporation that had so many acronyms that they had to create a companywide intranet acronym dictionary, which frequently did not help because teams from different parts of the company or locations would use the same acronyms to identify completely different things that began with the same letters.
Often the use of an acronym would take up more time than necessary when someone in the room had to question what a certain acronym stood for.
Personally, I just so love language that I’m not in a hurry to over-simplify. Too much context is lost in my opinion.
BTW, what’s ‘brb’?
You have a point. I think a good rule is that acronyms and abbreviations ought to be avoided unless the acronym or abbreviation is better known that what it stands for.
E.g.:
DNA
CIA
FBI
SCUBA
AIDS
By the way, SCUBA is now considered just a word, scuba. In the UK (oops, there I go with those acronyms again), the same is true of AIDS, which is written in lower-case letters: Aids.
By the way, do you know what “e.g.” stands for? It stands for “exempla gratis,” which literally means “free example,” or as we would say in English, “For example.”
And “i.e.” stands for “id est,” which is Latin for “that is.”
Acronyms are used everywhere
in chat rooms.
blogging
in medical field for example icu intensive care unit
as well as icu I see you
legally dui drunk under influence.
Many of those acromyns I am familiar with
These are used in texting.
A television show I saw
children use acronyms to disguise the language
but ask what they have to hide.
W5.
Lazy? I think it’s absolutely wonderful that they pick this up so quick. Imagine their speedy little brains picking up on and retaining this info like it’s every day life. It’s like KISS (keep it simple stupid). Man, just think how short this answer would be if I used all acronyms!
Lazy is not my point of view so in my mind people who don’t understand what’s going on had better learn the language so they can better spy on their kids
They want us to learn Spanish don’t they? Study different languages in school? Luckily we have the Internet to help kids and parents and they keep it up to date.
HYG
Not so tough and in a new world, kids will pick it up faster than adults. It’s taught in early school years but cheat sheets are everywhere. Although it’s common sense because it’s just the first letter of each word.
Keep and use this site on your kid. I’d be willing to bet they already know most of them.
http://www.netlingo.com/
We can’t call them lazy, if parents don’t try to correct, it could lead
to worse vocabulary usage, lack of better spelling etc..
Some are cute, many not so.. I have no problem with the LOL,as how are you to express some emotions when using the computer.
I worked in a nursing home for many years,and some of the nurses
coming in could hardly speak English properly much less figure
out what ” DNR” meant…God Help Those under their care
” Do Not Resuscitate” = DNR ( there are many more)
No telling how many mistakes have been made because people
can’t remember what they stand for, or that there are too many to
remember…
But Than again what do you do about the super long words you can’t spell, or pronounce?
I believe Ct goes with scan = Cat Scan
I think you need to have this discussion with the person who disagrees so strongly about using computer acronyms! After all, if they can accept using such initials as KFC, FBI, CIA and the like in their regular life, AND if they can accept the (previous) use of shorthand by secretaries in a business office,THEN they are showing hypocricy in disapproving of the “newest, latest” computer shorthands. “LOL, pos, brb, lul” and the like, are just the newest way to quicken communication. It delivers the same emotional “punch”, the same terms, faster.
OMG, what is their problem?
