[blml] abbreviations (again)

[Jerry Fusselman]

On Dec 8, 2007 10:57 AM, Ed Reppert <ereppert at rochester.rr.com> wrote
>
> It's not a question of purity, it's a question of space. There are a
> *lot* of acronyms in common use on the internet. Include them in
> blml's list, and the bridge related acronyms will get lost in the
> crowd. Not to mention the file will take up a lot more room on
> everyone's hard drive.

I was thinking of a sort list that uses fewer byes than the paragraph
you just wrote.

>
> > At least, could we add a link to a site that gives general
> > abbreviations?
>
> A common internet saying, albeit not an acronym, is "Google is your
> friend". I typed the words "internet acronyms" (without the quotes)
> in my browser's search field, and in less than a tenth of a second, I
> had a list of about 260,000 hits. The first one was "Internet
> Acronyms Dictionary", and that seems an adequate site for the purpose.
>

But the reader does not necessarily know ahead of time that it is an
Internet acronym. A link from the bottom of Henk's list is easier than
opening a new window, waiting, typing www.google.com, waiting, typing
"internet acronim" or similar, clicking a few more times, and
wondering if this inquiry is going to work.  Remember, English is not
the first language of everyone on this list, though it is for me, and
I have been slowed many times by the cool new acronyms.  At a minimum,
a good link at the bottom of Henk's list would be nice.

On the other hand, we just don't use that many here.  Since we are
acronym heavy at BLML, a reader here is less likely to assume an
unfamiliar acronym is a general one from the Internet.

We have become used to Eric's fondness for these things, so it seems
easy for many of us, but last night I asked a high school teacher if
she knew what the Internet acronyms IMHO, ISTR, and YMMV stood for.
She could not immediately remember any of them.  It seems to me that
Eric and whoever else uses them only use a small number.

A good example came from Jesper two hours ago.  He wrote "What should
the TL do ..."  I am about 70% sure that he meant TD---should I go
look up TL on google?  I suspect we on BLML should maybe voluntarily
try to avoid being too creative in our use of Internet acronyms,
because we have so many bridge ones.  Eric is a very thoughtful
writer, and I suspect he only uses a handful of the most common ones.

Jerry Fusselman