As text-messaging shorthand becomes increasingly widespread in emails, text messages and Tweets, a lot of people are still scrambling to decode it. In many offices, a working knowledge of text-speak is becoming de rigueur. And at home, parents need to know the lingo in order to keep up with—and sometimes police—their children.
One reason for the surge in texting abbreviations—more than 2,000 and counting, according to NetLingo.com is the boom in social-media sites like Twitter, where messages are limited to 140 characters. Text messages, too, are limited in length, so users have developed an alphabet soup of shorthand abbreviations to save time, and their thumbs.
Taking time to learn the jargon may seem like a WOMBAT (“Waste of money, brains and time”). But with over one trillion text messages sent and received in the U.S. last year, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, you run the risk of feeling out of it if you don’t.
Translation Sites
The confusion has given rise to a number of resources that provide English translations for terms like WRUD (“What are you doing?”) and TTYL (“Talk to you later”)—among them independent Web sites like NetLingo.com and UrbanDictionary.com and corporate ones like LG Mobile Phones’ DTXTR.com. Textapedia, a pocket guide to texting terms released last year, is sold in over 4,000 stores nationwide. NetLingo reports a 391% increase in the number of unique visitors over the past five years, while UrbanDictionary says it saw a 40% jump in its unique visitors last June from June 2008.
Teenagers, for their part, text in code for a reason. “It is usually because they are involved in activities which they don’t want their parents to discover, such as casual sex, drugs and alcohol,”. Indeed, parents may be startled by such popular terms as GNOC (“Get naked on camera”), POS (“Parent over shoulder”), LMIRL (“Let’s meet in real life”) and IWSN (“I want sex now”).
A sampling of some popular shorthand texting terms.
UG2BK . . . . . . . You got to be kidding
GBTW. . . . . . . . Get back to work
NMP . . . . . . . . . Not my problem
PIR . . . . . . . . . . Parent in room
GFTD. . . . . . . . . Gone for the day
FYEO. . . . . . . . . For your eyes only
BI5 . . . . . . . . . . Back in five minutes
DEGT . . . . . . . . Don’t even go there
BIL . . . . . Boss is listening
PAW. . . . Parents are watching
99 . . . . . . Parents are no longer watching
PCM . . . . Please call me
IMS. . . . . I am sorry
TOY. . . . . Thinking of you
KUTGW. . Keep up the good work
CID . . . . . Consider it done
FWIW. . . For what it’s worth
HAND . . . Have a nice day
IAT . . . . . I am tired
NRN . . . . No response necessary
4COL. . . . For crying out loud
WRUD. . . What are you doing
LMIRL. . . Let’s meet in real life
^5 . . . . . . High five
HBU . . . . .How about you?
CIL . . . . . .Check in later
SWDYT . . . . . .So what do you think?
WDYM . . . . . .What do you mean?
WOMBAT . . . . .Waste of money, brains and timeWDYM . . . . . .What do you mean?
IMO . . . . . . .In my opinion
ROFL . . . . . . .Rolling on the floor laughing
BFF . . . . . . . Best friends forever
OMG. . . . . . .Oh My God
LOL . . . . . . . . . Laugh out loud
All I know is that these abbreviations have shown they are very likely to be a part of our language for a long time, so we better get use to it, specially for those who have kids.
4 comments:
Girl, you taught me some things I had no idea about.. haha!
Ok, first of all, I had no idea what most of these abbreviations meant. I recently learned IMO and ROFL
I only know LOL, OmG, BFF..:)
I haaaate texting..unless it is something short, some people love having conversations and i am like do we need to go there???
just call me
@ XL: I didn't know a lot of them either, so now u know where to go to find the meanings of all these words.
@ Amina: I hate texting too, like u said people have long conversations for nothing.
you right in the years coming these are going to be part of our dictionary.
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