Texting, Facebook, Twitter- Acronyms

[imoldernu]

Since I do none of the above, I get a bit lost when the acronyms come up...

Trying to be a good citizen and have now read about .02% of the 947.000 posts here on ER... Came across the sticky re: acronyms.

Relieved to find that DW referred to "dear wife", rather than "divorced wife" and reasoned what +1 means...

Brings up the question... Am I the only one who is behind the times? Don't text, tweet, or do FB. And one more question... Do people who "do" FB etc, speak the acronyms in their daily conversations> ie. Do they say "eff, eye, el" or "father in law"?

Getting older isn't as easy as it used to be.

 

[RHLnFLA]

Friend of mine's grandson's initials are "WTF". Boy is he going to have fun texting!!

 

[aaronc879]

Getting older isn't as easy as it used to be.

I'm only 32 and I don't know half the stuff these kids are talking about. I rarely text, never tweet, and am on Facebook but not very active.

 

[braumeister]

After a career in the military, acronyms are second nature to me, so I don't really mind them. We always pronounced them as if they were words, no matter how awkward that may have been. Rarely if ever would someone say the letters in sequence. The short ones, such as DW, FIL, etc. that you're referring to wouldn't be used; in fact I doubt if I've ever seen them except in online forums like this.

If you don't use them or see them regularly, they definitely can be off-putting, but I admit to using them more often than I probably should, IMHO.

 

[Lsbcal]

...(snip)...
Getting older isn't as easy as it used to be.

Don't worry, most of this stuff is just faddish. Sort of like the latest in Fall fashions. Faddishness will always be with us and some will mistake it for real knowledge. There is a lot of money in fads. But whereas the Middle East people seem to need those 140 characters to communicate (tweet), I don't see why our connected democratic society needs it much except maybe for ads.

I just look the stuff up and study the trends on the some technology pages. Or take a trip to Best Buy and play with the latest gadget to get the gist of it. Learning new interfaces is not that much fun.

Here are a few sites that have easy to read tech articles:
NY Times technology
BBC - technology

Any other good tech article sites others can recommend?

 

[KingB]

.

Relieved to find that DW referred to "dear wife", rather than "divorced wife" and reasoned what +1 means...

I thought it meant "D..b Wife".

 

[kumquat]

It's perspective, I think. I don't tweet (it's 'for the birds'), don't do FB and spell all words in the dozen or so texts I've produced in my life. That's today's reality in my life.

In a former life, I used all kinds of acronyms. Do 'words' like HASP, JES, TCAM, VTAM, BDAM, VSAM or RACF have any meaning to other posters.

 

[scrabbler1]

Since I do none of the above, I get a bit lost when the acronyms come up...

Trying to be a good citizen and have now read about .02% of the 947.000 posts here on ER... Came across the sticky re: acronyms.

Relieved to find that DW referred to "dear wife", rather than "divorced wife" and reasoned what +1 means...

Brings up the question... Am I the only one who is behind the times? Don't text, tweet, or do FB. And one more question... Do people who "do" FB etc, speak the acronyms in their daily conversations> ie. Do they say "eff, eye, el" or "father in law"?

Getting older isn't as easy as it used to be.

I don't text, twitter, FB, or even own a cell phone. No interest in any of that stuff.

I can usually figure out the acronyms I see here and in other message boards anad forums. Some of the acronymns are unique to the specific forums so I have to remember which forum I am in to figure out the meaning. If I encounter an acronym I had not seen before (FIFY is an example), I can simply do an internet search and the answer appears.

Often I have had to unlearn an acronym's old but still valid meaning and pick up its new one. Examples are ER=Emergency Room (now Early Retirement, of course), DH=Designated Hitter in baseball (now Dear Husband), CF=Cystic Fibrosis (now Childfree).

 

[Bestwifeever]

Pssst.... VWIAX!

All the abbreviation I need to know.

 

[MichaelB]

In a former life, I used all kinds of acronyms. Do 'words' like HASP, JES, TCAM, VTAM, BDAM, VSAM or RACF have any meaning to other posters.

Yep.

 

[MBAustin]

In a former life, I used all kinds of acronyms. Do 'words' like HASP, JES, TCAM, VTAM, BDAM, VSAM or RACF have any meaning to other posters.

Oh dear. I am guilty to recognizing all of the above and I think I could actually provide the words to go with the letters for all except HASP. And no, I didn't work for IBM - just a customer

 

[Midpack]

I use Twitter to follow magazines, groups and people of interest - way more efficient than checking all the sites individually. Have you ever tried it? It's not what most people think (kids posting nonsense to each other).

I text when I have a short message, as do most (but not all) my friends. It's cheaper and faster than a phone call, and I'm all about cheaper. I call when it's a longer conversation or there's a lot of iteration to the discussion. Most people I know are more likely to respond to a text than a call. We don't have kids, but parents we know tell us texting is the most reliable way to contact their kids...kids won't answer phone calls from their parents.

Not on FB (yet) only because DW worries about privacy issues. But a lot of organizations we're interested in keep their FB pages more up to date than their websites (which are becoming increasingly inferior) - many are just dropping their websites and keeping FB up to date. Some new orgs don't even bother with websites, they only have FB pages. I look at FB pages every day, it's how I keep up with some things.

Like Nords, acronyms were part of worklife, so not a problem. I use them all the time, though my 90 yr old parents always ask 'what does that mean' even though I remind them they can Google themselves. When I run into one I don't know, Google it, easy peasy.

Growing old may not be getting any easier (physically I agree), but how easy/hard is largely up to each of us. If you don't try some of these things, how would you know? The world is not going to cater to people who resist change, never has - never will and shouldn't. If you try it and don't like it that's fine, if you don't try to begin with...

YMMV

 

[ERD50]

A couple that I wish people would avoid here are "SIL" and "DS". Is that Sister-In-Law, or Son-In-Law?, Dear Sister, or Dear Son? It's not always obvious from context, and I don't like to work that hard.

-ERD50

 

[Rustward]

In a former life, I used all kinds of acronyms. Do 'words' like HASP, JES, TCAM, VTAM, BDAM, VSAM or RACF have any meaning to other posters.

Yes, and IPL, JFCB, FCB, CRA, CIDF, CADF, IOS, DCB, IOB, SDWA, SWADS, UCB, VTOC, VVDS, CSA, ACB, RPL, IOCP, PDS, BSAM, QSAM, RDW, BDW, ECB, ESTAE, PICA, PIE, EPIE, just to name a few off the top of my head.

 

[MichaelB]

MVS TCPIP

Edit: strange upper case SW issue. That has always been the case with computers, long as I can remember.

 

[Nords]

Brings up the question... Am I the only one who is behind the times? Don't text, tweet, or do FB. And one more question... Do people who "do" FB etc, speak the acronyms in their daily conversations> ie. Do they say "eff, eye, el" or "father in law"?
Getting older isn't as easy as it used to be.

Yes, as my daughter assures me, you are behind the times. I recommend that you spend those times with children/grandkids who will teach you how to catch up. Otherwise they may forget that you have any relevance in their lives.

If you don't have any kids/grandkids handy you could try to borrow some from the neighbors-- and pay them a consulting fee.

Facebook's "friend finder" and privacy issues are hugely annoying, but once you get past the first hour you can start searching for friends or for groups whose membership you could share. It's a great way to socialize without having to stand up or listen to party chatter.

We hardly ever pronounce the "FIL" acronym. But when I was in Nuclear Power School 30 years ago, they made us pronounce the noun names of all the acronyms instead of speaking them phonetically. It's a habit that's seared its way into my cerebral cortex, so it's OK to see "FIL" and say "father-in-law"...

We don't have kids, but parents we know tell us texting is the most reliable way to contact their kids...kids won't answer phone calls from their parents.

I know a mother who's supposed to be an empty-nester. Her oldest just graduated from college and her youngest just started. The "rule" in her family is that the "kids" have four hours to respond to texts. If they exceed that four-hour limit then there are no followup calls or other warning shots. She simply ceases paying their cell-phone bill.

 

[JOHNNIE36]

I guess it becomes habit to use acronyms, especially when texting, but I really can't see it on a forum such as this and I am going to cease as of right now. Most of the time I have to stop and think about the acronym and I won't have to do that anymore. I'm glad the subject came up as it gives me a chance to get off that kick and go back to "long hand". This includes saying goodbye to Dear Wife acronym. From now it's just wife. Thank you to the original poster.

 

[imoldernu]

Being investment challenged, this site helps me with some of the financial discussions here on ER...

77 Investment Acronyms and Investment Abbreviations

It also has links to popular acronyms, and a search box.
A recent one that threw me, was AA... which in the search box turned up 484 definitions...

SIL had 70 definitions, and DW, 76 (but DW was at the top of the list).
The second TGIF definition is "Tactical Ground Intercept Facility".

 

[Tyro]

Am I the only one who is behind the times?

Absolutely not; I don't do any of those either, though my "not-divorced wife" does LinkedIn, but they don't do much of that there. I've been aware of, and used, many of the acronyms & abbreviations from years on [-]Arpanet[/-] Usenet, but I occasionally come across some I need to look up. Fortunately there are a godzillion websites that enumerate and define most of them. I have never used them in regular conversation; for me they are shorthand only.

I've figured out "+1" for myself as well. (or at least I think I have. )

Tyro

 

[Tyro]

I thought it meant "D..b Wife".

Some websites acknowledge Dear or Damn(ed). Same for DH.
Interpretation is in the mind of the beholder.

 

[Tyro]

The "rule" in her family is that the "kids" have four hours to respond to texts. If they exceed that four-hour limit then there are no followup calls or other warning shots. She simply ceases paying their cell-phone bill.

I like it! I'm going to suggest it to a certain SisterIL (to avoid any confusion. )

Tyro

 

[Nodak]

HASP, if I remember correctly is Houston Automatic Spooling Program. I would prefer to forget that and all those others but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. There were several times when I was working that I thought about trying to generate a memo that would be nothing but acronyms and the articles a, an, and the.

 

[kumquat]

One of the antique car forums I haunt has DPO (your-word-here Previous Owner).

 

[kumquat]

HASP, if I remember correctly is Houston Automatic Spooling Program. I would prefer to forget that and all those others but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. There were several times when I was working that I thought about trying to generate a memo that would be nothing but acronyms and the articles a, an, and the.

Thank you wikipedia. I was thinking Houston Automatic Spooling Priority but it's been a long time. My first job involved making mods to HASP V4. When HASP morphed into JES I had 10K 'card image' mods to move.

ER beats that ATH

 

[Nodak]

Thank you wikipedia. I was thinking Houston Automatic Spooling Priority but it's been a long time. My first job involved making mods to HASP V4. When HASP morphed into JES I had 10K 'card image' mods to move.

ER beats that ATH

The Mega Corp I worked for had, at the time, the Largest IBM system installed in Minneapolis running OS/MVT and about 6 partitions and we used HASP for all our spooling.