Just thinking bout the verbal and orthographical laziness that is plaguing and permeating our everyday communication. Just like Hank Moody, the main character in the excellent Californication took umbrage at someone spelling out L.O.L. instead of actually laughing, I too have been exposed to the same L.O.L. It’s not upsetting as much as the phonetic translation of English words into Maltese (werkbuk anyone?) and I too, have been guilty of using or abusing acronyms and abbreviations.

My referring to Manchester United as “Man U”, at times is not understood for example, let alone some geek speak like “FTW”. At times abbreviations can be extremely useful and often within a specific field, they become the common used noun, for example few people know what all those computer abbreviations in specs mean… RAM, ROM, PCMCIA, EPROM, CGA, PCI, AGP etc… but they actually are extremely useful because they are easier to remember and more efficient. But that’s the point – efficiency, acronyms should be used within the correct context and should be efficient. If I have to stop to explain an acronym then it defeated the purpose of the acronym. Within printed texts, it is common for a phrase to be written in full in its first instance and then abbreviated thereafter. That works… Unfortunately I’ve read many documents, especially of the marketing variety where the writer is throwing out some acronym which is hardly used in normal vernacular and then expects a lay person to understand their jargon. It is obviously done in many instances to impress others in the same sector (be it marketing or information technology) or to befuddle those not cognisant in the field. It’s another way to doublespeak, equivocate and to throw around buzzwords which in the end usually backfires as if someone has to stop to understand what is being read or said.

Efficiency, again is also related to context. Different people might have different meanings for the same acronym or word. RAM for a computer user is Random Access Memory, a ram, for a Gozitan is  tomorrow’s date. However, for both, a virus caught in the RAM is alas, bad news.