Question

[Robert Brockway]

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Paul King wrote:

> I strongly disagree with your implication that 'net acronyms were ever
> any part of a "subculture".

Hi Paul.  They are definitely part of a subculture:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/

The culture is alive and well and has leaked many terms to the
mainstream in recent decades, much like other successful subcultures.

This subculture has even been the subject of formal cultural studies.

> 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.

Not if the audience understands.  As a rule I avoid accronyms that I think
it is unlikely my audience will understand (or I'll post a reference) but
this is not equivalent to saying the jargon is not useful or does not have
relevance to a particular groups of users (the subculture).

In any case the Jargon File is a good read.

Cheers,
	Rob

>
> Paul King
>
> >
> > ~ C
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> =========================================================
> Paul King              http://www3.sympatico.ca/pking123/
>
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-- 
Robert Brockway
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073, Email: rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org, http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
--
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