Question
Lennart Sorensen
lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Sat Feb 28 18:20:15 UTC 2004
On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 10:08:35AM -0500, Paul King wrote:
> That's not really the point. Several years ago, I used to give talks on 'net
> use in courses, and sure, I explained 'net acronyms.
>
> I strongly disagree with your implication that 'net acronyms were ever any part
> of a "subculture".
>
> Acronyms, especially those germaine to a particular area or technology, are and
> have been useful to ease the reading of messages on Internet newsgroups or on
> mailing lists. That is, it rose out of conveniance. Newcomers were often
> encouraged to read a FAQ to become familiar with the norms of the group and
> with the acronyms. I maintain a FAQ for the newsgroup sci.bio.food-science
> where I devote an entire section to scientific and Internet acronyms.
>
> Acronyms are meant to clarify. That is, they are meant to ease the reading of
> messages in the group for those who have dealt much with the topic at hand. If,
> for example I want to talk about polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, it would
> save a lot of typing (and a lot of eyestrain on the part of the reader) to
> simply abbreviate it as PAGE. PAGE might be used several times in the same
> sentence. Anyone interested in PAGE or what it is used for will immediately
> recognise the acronym. If they don't, they can read the FAQ and at least see
> what it stands for. There are many acceptable uses for Internet acronyms, as
> well as smilies and so on. I use them all the time.
>
> Over-use of acronyms obscure messages. Unless someone wish to post a FAQ to
> interpret their own jargon, they are essentialy writing messages to themselves.
Hmm, and here I thought they were used to shorten messages so the usenet
servers running 9600 bps modems wouldn't have so much data to transfer.
:)
Lennart Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
More information about the Legacy
mailing list