What is shorthand?

With the popularity and rise in usage of real time text-based communications such as Usenet, instant messaging, e-mail, Internet and online gaming chat rooms, discussion boards and cellphone text messaging came the emergence of a new language tailored to the immediacy and compactness of these new communication media.

Shorthand is a series of characters that abbreviate a common phrase. An example might be "ROTFL", which translates to "rolling on the floor laughing", "LOL" for "laugh out loud" and "IIRC" for "if I remember (recall) correctly". Generally speaking, shorthhand is not accepted in the Usenet or forum environment where its use is generally considered lazy.

When is shorthand acceptable?

Shorthand is generally acceptable in a real-time discussion type situation, such as when using MSN Messenger, ICQ and Yahoo chat, because it potentially saves typing time for slower typists in a very personal chat type situation, but shorthand is not considered acceptable in forums and Usenet. The time it takes to compose a message is something that is generally not a consideration when composing a post for Usenet (or a forum). Use of shorthand in such discussion mediums is usually considered lazy.

When people post into a forum or to Usenet, a persons posts reflect on character and are archived, sometimes, forever! When one writes a post to Usenet or a forum, they should not only take the time to avoid shorthand, but they should make every effort to ensure that their spelling, grammar and punctuation is as good as they can get it (even if as close as you can get it is quite poor). It's the effort that matters, not the result.

When posting into a Usenet situation it is sometimes a good idea to cut and paste the post from a word processor that has the capability to check spelling and general grammatical errors.

This page serves as a means to translate shorthand (other lazy people use) rather than a dictionary of available acronyms for use in your own posts.