The Internet is forcing what (until the age of computing, at least) had been the slow and gradual evolution of the English language. ikr? New words have been adopted. Acronyms have become words in their own sense (iyswim).
Even the format of acronyms has been an evolutionary thread that has taken on its own lease of life because TYPING IN CAPS is identified as shouting which, in itself, is ironic because the very base structure of computing (and the Internet, on which it sits) is made up of a combination of ALL CAPS and lower case. Here’s one I wrote earlier (actually, I wrote this excerpt many years ago):
YSK I’m trying to avoid this being a TL;DR, but I have my favourite acronyms. IANAL is probably my most favourite tbqhwy. But aorn (I just made that one up) my most, most favourite is TIL.
Because TIL something very important. Sortov.
TIL that I have a pension pot that I didn’t know about (or, more correctly, probably was once very aware of but then tucked it into a dusty corner of my mind and promptly forgot about).
And there is money in it. Well obviously there is. It wouldn’t be much of a pension pot if there wasn’t any money in it, would it? No. Quite.
But the good news about this particular pension pot is when I set it up (read: when it was set up for me), I nominated a date/age when I could start to draw on it.
That date/age has passed!
I shall be discussing this unexpected but welcome development with my financial adviser shortly. But MRW I learned this earlier today was definitely 🙂
With the exception of ‘tbqhwy’ I didn’t understand a word.
TBQHWY.
IKR?
I have fond memories of asking the bulletin board operator what on earth TLA stood for.
TMI? 🙂