I guess I have to say this again: I am to the point where I just refuse to stop and Google some

[Atticus]

obscure acronym in order to make some sense of a post. I will just stop reading that post.

I am not complaining about the use of commonly used acronyms---FBI, PTB, RWNJ, etc. But don't post something like " MTG spoke at the VWCL" and expect us to know that Margaret Taylor-Greene addressed the Valdosta White Citizens League (fictional group---just an example).

[brooklynite]

1. Oh, SCAJRWYW...

[mercuryblues]

2. Supreme court arrests JR with young woman

[Atticus]

4. I don't want to know----- nt (no text)

[KS Toronado]

47. South Carolina Activist Judge Rules While Yelling Wildly

[secondwind]

3. Atticus, I'm with you. Maybe it's my age, lol.

[NCjack]

59. Me too. Seriously, Atti, what is PTB?

[csziggy]

79. PTB Powers That Be

I wouldn't know it if Anne McCaffrey hadn't titled a series Petaybee.

The Petaybee Series is a series of young-adult science fiction novels by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.

Powers trilogy
The first Petaybee series, the Powers trilogy, consists of three books: Powers that Be published in 1993, Power Lines (1994) and Power Play (1995).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petaybee_Series

[Yonnie3]

5. I still often search acronyms

only to find dozens of possible meanings of which none would seem to apply to the post.

[Jerry2144]

19. Or

Or you find ones that make the super very humorous, scary, or strange because they are not the correct ones, but fit the MadLib template

[USALiberal]

6. lighten up! nt

[lagomorph777]

7. I share your peeve.

[NCjack]

61. I have this peeve. I know that Biden is a D DEM and Trump is a R GOP.

But, when OPs contain info about a politician that I have idea about, and the party and state are not given, I'm chasing after that info.

[lagomorph777]

80. Yes, that too!

[hvn_nbr_2]

90. I share that one and a whole bunch more

"Wait for it!"--No, I'm not going to watch a 40-minute video to find out what the fuck you think I should wait for. Tell me something.

"New poll: Fleming leading Waukebock!!!!!"--I don't know every D and R candidate for every office from county council to Senate in every jurisdiction in every state. Tell me who the fuck you're talking about.

"Wooleybong on Larry now!!!!"--When I read your post twelve hours later, Wooleybong isn't on Larry any more, and besides I don't know who Larry is or what network or show he's on.

"Did you see that?"--Maybe if I knew what the fuck you're talking about, I would know if I saw it.

"He makes a good point here"--Once again, I'm not going to watch a 40-minute video just to find out what point somebody made. Tell me what the point is and maybe I'll watch it.

Making me play "tweet detective"--If you just post a bunch of tweets that I have to search and analyze and go in and out and back and forth to figure out what the fuck the point is and how they're related, I'm not going to bother.

Four-paragraph "mystery meat"--If you post a four-paragraph excerpt that doesn't even say anything about your subject line or doesn't even say anything intelligible, so that if I spent ten minutes trying to figure it out, I might make sense of it, well, no thanks. The four-paragraph rule about quoting doesn't prohibit you from saying something in your own words. Give me a fucking summary or at least a key point. If I can't tell what the fuck you're talking about, I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure it out.

The "Amway curiosity approach"--I'm not going to read random mystery articles because some random person I don't know said, "This is so cool!"

"Click here" "Check this out" "Oh wow"--No, thanks.

Unintelligible nonsense because you didn't preview or proofread your post--If you don't respect me enough to see if your post even makes sense, I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure out what words are missing where or where one sentence was supposed to end and the next begin or what the grotesquely misspelled word was supposed to be.

The basic point: If you won't even try to communicate, I'm won't even try to figure out what the hell you're talking about.

[lagomorph777]

91. That's a fantastic list. Add: Blind links to Twit, and subject line "This!"

[SharonClark]

93. May I add the "asking for a friend" nonsense?

[CurtEastPoint]

8. or one more reference to some GD anime or Game of Thrones shit.

[USALiberal]

15. Lol, ok! Nt

[SheltieLover]

10. I don't either

It's like a post with no context. I just move on.

[marble falls]

20. Absolutely infuriates me. There should a "thumbs down" just for this ...

or all the "Donald Trump is a .... !" OPs. EVERYBODY knows it already, and there's usually 3-5 of them a day.

I can't wait till he's in jail and fades away.

[NJCher]

51. which illustrates a communication principle

It is the job of the writer to make the communication clear to the reader. It is not the reader's job to have to Google, wonder, or whatever.

Post 10, dear poster, describes the likely reaction to your post. If you can't do it right, don't bother because you're just wasting bandwidth.

Signed:

English teacher

[PatSeg]

76. You summed it up perfectly

It is up to the writer to communicate clearly. Though the reader may need to look up the definition of a word they don't know or a public figure they aren't familiar with, they shouldn't have to guess what you mean. If it is worth saying, it is worth putting some time and effort into typing it.

[oasis]

11. It's almost as annoying as reading an incomplete report. nt

[snowybirdie]

12. YES!

Why make your opinions not understandable or obscure? I'm with you.

[ARPad95]

13. I welcome any opportunity to learn new things. I'm a researcher by trade. Doesn't bother me.

[mitch96]

14. I know in medicine we LOVE our TLA's.. three letter acronyms.. Like "the pt has S.F.B" watch out...

aka Shit For Brains.. I think lots of tRumpers have SFB, eh?
m

[geardaddy]

33. It's the same in IT

So many TLAs.

[mitch96]

38. "same in IT" I did a little bit of IT in hospitals.. Those guys were a hoot.. I liked the term

F.N.U.GY or Fa-nu-gi aka fucken new guy... "hey FNUGY get me that wire stretcher from the shop and 10' of fallopian tubing from central supply. Oh and some sterile steam to clean this power supply"..

m

[geardaddy]

45. LOL

[Glorfindel]

63. My first night solo as a hospital clerk

I admitted a patient with the diagnosis "EHOB." (It was the only set of letters I could make out in the attending physician's scrawl.) The nurses teased me for weeks about the diagnosis of "elevate head of bed."

[Lonestarblue]

16. I absolutely agree.

It’s annoying because it would take only seconds to spell out the words instead of using an obscure acronym.

[marble falls]

17. The Valdosta White Citizens League is concerned by your interest ...

I'm also sick of all the "insider" posts, like : "Tom Cotton said it again!!!" with no body text.

[PatSeg]

55. There are people who are watching cable news

and somehow assume that everyone else is watching the exact same thing at the same time.

[marble falls]

56. Drives me crazy.

[Totally Tunsie]

69. Thank you! There have been more and more of these empty posts lately.

It's very annoying, and a waste of time both for the poster and the reader.

What I find astounding is that quite a few of these empty posts have been made by DUers who have been here for 10+ years and have 20,000+ posts to their credit. Surely, they should know better by now.

[marble falls]

86. I call them 'non sequitir' posts.

[Xipe Totec]

18. We need a BOA to look for TLAs

(Book of acronyms), (Three Letter Acronyms)

[irisblue]

26. Urban dictionary?

[Xipe Totec]

97. UD is a Two Letter Acronym nt

[McKim]

21. This Limits DU to Newcomers

Using these acronyms makes DU more of an exclusive community and turns off newcomers.
I think we should stop using them. They are cute and special but will not help us grow and they also diminish the seriousness of what we are now facing, Facism and the struggle of our lives.
Too much cutesy comedy relieves pressure but trivializes what we are facing.

[msfiddlestix]

22. Recoommend

[TheBlackAdder]

23. Since when did WQL become MTG?

.

Wacky QAnon Lady

.

[Hortensis]

54. Agree. Acronyms are for important figures, MLK and FDR,

not shiny new objects and despicable whackjobs. We're serious people, not TMZ fans.

[littlemissmartypants]

24. Atticus, I understand your frustration. I just use the trash thread button.

Some posts aren't worth the stress. You could block/ignore the poster if you see they are a repeat offender, I guess, but I just use the trash the thread. It's highly likely that a new OP Thread or two or three will be posted with the same information in a more user friendly form.

The amount of redundancy there is on DU is ridiculous. It would be really great and helpful if the hosts of General Discussion created a pinned post on the forum of acronyms as a reference. Meanwhile, I'm just "thank you next" and moving on after I trash the thread.

Stay encouraged.

❤ lmsp

[ananda]

25. It is pretty annoying, but there is always Google.

...

[PatSeg]

52. Why should people have to go to Google

when the writer could just spell out the words? It seems to me, the point of being on an Internet forum is to communicate with other people and saying what you mean clearly enhances that communication. I think it is insulting to readers to speak in acronyms, expecting them to either know what it means or go look it up. Sometimes it comes across as exclusive and even condescending, implying that "everyone knows what that means" when obviously they don't.

There are some acronyms that are pretty universal and using them is understandable, but others are so obscure, I often wonder if people just make them up as they go.

[SlogginThroughIt]

77. Because fighting it is useless.

TLA’s are slang basically. Have we ever been able to demand that people not use slang? Like it or not it is part of the common vernacular.

[PatSeg]

82. Oh, I don't think it is useless

I accept that to a certain degree, acronyms will forever be with us and I can live with that. However, people can be taught to communicate clearly, especially if others let them know that their excessive and often obscure acronyms are ridiculous and sometimes even insulting.

Meanwhile, they may be common vernacular for some, but certainly not all. The reason why more people don't complain is because they often think they are the only ones who don't have a clue what the writer is saying, while other people are scratching their heads and trying to decide WHICH definition on Google is the right one. When I've brought it up on Facebook, I found that most people agreed with me.

[TNNurse]

27. I also find that if it looks interesting enough I look it up.

If not, I just ignore the post or sometimes check the replies to see if someone helped out with the answer.

In healthcare there are many acronyms but they do have become complicated by repetition of the same ones for several names.

[Cozmo]

28. First job out of college worked at the local paper, per my editor if your readers need to look it up

Leave it out. Don't make your readers feel like they need to be a member of a special club to know what you are reporting. On the other hand, I'm much older now and don't keep up with all the acronyms so I do look them up, in an effort to stay in the loop. Yeah, it takes a little more time, don't do it for everything, but since I grew up I came to realize that I don't know everything. Whatever

[Harker]

29. Similarly, not everyone with three part names

merits a three letter abbreviated nickname.

I don't even use the common shorthand abbreviations you cited. I recognize many, but do not employ them.

Maybe it's generational, in part.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

30. All too often the acronym is unfindable.

Or there are a whole bunch of possibilities, none of which seem to fit the post. It does take barely any time to spell out what you mean.

Another pet peeve is someone who posts an essentially contextless post, assuming we are all watching the same thing on TV at that very moment. First off, there is more than one possible thing to be watching. And not all of us are watching TV all the time to begin with.

[FailureToCommunicate]

31. H & G

[IronLionZion]

32. I like when people share something they just saw on tv

assuming everyone else would have been watching it and know what/who they're talking about.

And on election night, it's always fun when people post results about some local race somewhere but don't say where.

Mind reading is an essential skill on discussion forums

[turbinetree]

34. Exactly....................

[WestofDenver]

35. Acronym mis-use

I think its funny when an author will set up an acronym for a phrase, but then neither the phrase nor the acronym appears anywhere else in the article.

[MrModerate]

36. Are you *sure* there's no Valdosta White Citizens League? n/t

[Atticus]

43. No. nt

[MrModerate]

37. Back when I managed proposals for engineering projects submitted to NASA...

My life was entirely consumed by acronyms. Which NASA lurrrrrrves.


In fact, if you were overly punctilious about spelling out acronyms like you'd do in any other technical document, the contract officers would think you didn't get how NASA works, and score you lower in bid evaluation.

[KPN]

39. What's PTB?

[Tracer]

42. I don't know that one either!

Pass The Buck? Press The Button?

[Atticus]

44. Forgive me, please. "Powers That Be".

[KPN]

53. Not to worry Atticus. I was just messin' with

ya. You know, just got caught up in the moment.

[CaptainTruth]

58. I honestly thought you meant Pre-Trial Bail.

[Crunchy Frog]

49. Powers That Be.

[Wicked Blue]

40. AMEN!

The news media is guilty of this too.

The rule in news reporting was to identify the (whoever or whatever it is) spelled out in full, with the acronym afterward in parentheses. Then the writer could use the acronym in the rest of the article.

Some publications may still do this.

I find this trend toward using excessive unexplained acronyms may be leading us to Orwell's Newspeak.

[Tech]

41. My grandson uses acronyms in his daily speech. I explain over and over that I am hard of hearing,

so I don't understand him. As a 9 year old, he just rolls his eyes and says WEGMa. I think that means whatever grandma.

[PatSeg]

64. Seriously?

Writing acronyms is one thing, but saying them out loud must be really annoying. It is like a new language, but I don't think it is necessarily an improvement.

WEGMa - I would think saying "whatever grandma" would be a lot easier.

[FakeNoose]

46. That's the whole problem with phones

Everybody - get off your phones and onto your desktop or laptop computers. Go back to typing on a normal keyboard, and you won't have this temptation to abbreviate everything.

Do it now!

[SlogginThroughIt]

78. YES! DIN!

[Paper Roses]

48. Agree, thanks for bringing this up. I am sometimes stumped.

It is a pain in the backside to search for a translation. Common acronyms aside, some of them are beyond me and since time is valuable, I go on to another post. It only takes a minute to type out the real wording.

[demmiblue]

50. It doesn't bother me. n/t

[CaptainTruth]

57. Oddly enough, you listed PTB as being commonly used yet I don't know what it means.

I'm not going to Google so I'll guess.

Post-Traumatic Blues (not as bad as PTSD?).
As a musician, Pentatonic Tribal Blues could be a cool musical style.
I know there's a whole "little horsey" fandom & they like Pony Tail Bows.
Archeologists are always excited to find Prehistoric Triceratops Bones.
Every time I'm in Amish country I buy Precooked Trail Bologna.

That's enough pre-covefe thinking, I'm gonna grab a guitar & work on inventing Pentatonic Tribal Blues.

[PatSeg]

73. I'd never heard that one either

I'm going to go with "Party of Belgium"!

Also, Pulmonary tuberculosis, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, or Pass the Buck.

[Baclava]

60. Well I learned something on Cuomo last night, IFB, Interruptible feedback, that ear thing he wears

One way director to live air talent cueing communications

IFB, I have to know these things! lol

[Sloumeau]

62. I try never to use abbreviations in my blog postings.

I prefer that people exactly what I mean, and I don't like making people have to run to Google.com and guess which of the many versions available are the right one for my abbreviation.

[PatSeg]

68. And then come back to the post,

read it again, and often discover that it wasn't really worth the trouble in the first place.

I often Google words I am not familiar with and I find that educational and worth the trouble, but I should not have put in extra effort to understand what someone is saying, because they are too lazy to type entire words.

[Nitram]

65. I don't have any trouble Googling acronyms I don't know. I consider it part of my education.

There are a lot I don't know. I'm 69 years old.

[lillypaddle]

66. Thanks!

the use of acronyms has gotten totally out of hand. Rule of thumb for me is that you use the full name the first time with the acronym in parentheses, and then the acronym for references throughout the remaining paragraph or article. For instance:

Margaret Taylor-Greene (MTG) spoke at the Valdosta White Citizens League (VWCL). The VWCL is a known white supremacy group, of which MTG has been a member for several years.

[majdrfrtim]

67. When I was in the midst of seeing whether I could get an Army Commission at age 50

with no prior service, I found myself at a large Army Reserve training installation on a Friday afternoon to meet up with an Army National Guard unit for their monthly training weekend, at the invitation of its Battalion Commander. He brought me gear to use for the weekend, including one of his own camouflage uniforms, devoid of rank insignia. Long story short: Saturday evening at a staff meeting to plan upcoming training, at which I felt completely out-of-place, he shocked the hell out of me by saying, "So, Chaplain, what are your thoughts on this matter?" I replied, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not even a Chaplain in the military yet, and I have absolutely no idea what the topic here is, as Major X seemed to have more acronyms than actual words in the last two sentences of her presentation." Everyone burst out laughing.

[PatSeg]

71. That is priceless!

Thanks for sharing.

[PatSeg]

70. I had written a post much like yours

a year ago on Facebook and the responses were really interesting, as well as humorous. One of the people I had in mind didn't realize she was one of the main offenders. She wholeheartedly agreed with me, yet went on to respond to my comments with acronyms that made her sound like a fifteen year old sending text messages to her "BFF". I just refuse to respond when she uses them. I reposted it again this year, hoping it will get through to a few.

Meanwhile, I look a lot of things up everyday, as it is an ongoing learning experience, but I have absolutely no need to learn a bunch of acronyms that I will never use and probably never even come across again. Also, I will only use a person's initials for a handful of iconic figures who earned such a designation - i.e. FDR, LBJ, MLK, RBG, JFK. Margaret Taylor-Greene doesn't fall in that category.

[Poiuyt]

72. I refuse to Google what PTB means

[Fozzledick]

84. I don't need to Google what Poiuyt means

What, me worry?

(But how many can see the

[Poiuyt]

95. Very good!

[Blecht]

74. I'm not quite there

I'll Google it, but if some stock ticker abbreviation (which is obviously not what the poster is talking about) is the first hit, I stop.

Then I put the poster on ignore so I don't have to go through the aggravation again.

[SlogginThroughIt]

75. Thanks for the announcement.

[csziggy]

81. Now even newspaper reporters use acronyms without explanation

I was taught to use the full name of an organization the first time it's mentioned, then if you wish to use the acronym later, put it in parenthesis after the first use of the fullname.

Such as "Margaret Taylor-Greene (MTG) addressed the Valdosta White Citizens League (VWCL)." Then later "VWCL endorsed MTG after her speech."

Now too often reporters only include the acronyms with no in-article definition. That's OK for something like the UN or USA, but not for the myriad of other obscure acronyms floating around.

[question everything]

83. FTW? Also titles of threads

I refuse to open any thread without some explanation like THIS, or Funniest twit, or Amazing, etc.

May be a generational difference. I don't understand and do not care about replies that just have symbols

Even when I post a cartoon I give it a title

[Atticus]

88. Most of the time, as used here, I assume FTW means "For The Win" and is meant to

compliment a post or tweet.

On the other hand, "FTW" on the filthy denim vest of a Hell's Angel motorcycle gang member means "Fuck The World".

[question everything]

89. LOL (no need to explain this one)

[KG]

85. Valdosta White Citizens League might be real.

[radius777]

87. In any realm there will be acronyms to speed up conversation,

especially in a field like politics where there are multi-word phrases and terms that are constantly repeated. YMMV

[Patterson]

92. I consider people who post these acronyms as having nothing to offer.

The same for people who say "alot," "allot," "then" instead of "than," "ya" instead of "yeah," and on and on. They have nothing to offer if they are that uneducated.

[central scrutinizer]

94. ACRONYM

Asinine Cycle Ride On New Year’s Morning. Also called the Polar Bear Ride. 40 miles early morning, hung over.

[Dr. Strange]

96. We're keeping "tiaihtsdcotywwytdycybidyd" though, right?