We’ve got to get new iPhones — we have iPhone 7’s and think the current generation is iPhone 13, or maybe 14. Anyhow, in anticipation of getting around to upgrading, I was deleting a lot of old text and e-mail messages.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but reading through them, I’m still amazed at how our method of communication has changed. If you just glanced at the messages you’d think they were written in some kind of code or something. Actually I read an article not long ago that said most electronic communication today used some sort of “shorthand.”
That may be true and I may be quibbling over terminology, but in the old days (and that probably means maybe the 1970s) shorthand referred to a system of rapid handwriting using symbols to represent words, phrases, and letters. People in offices used to dictate, and only secretaries knew how to write in abbreviated or symbolic form.
Today, shorthand refers to the abbreviated messages typed back and forth via messaging or e-mail. Today’s “shorthand” can look like acronyms, but they’re a little different. The difference between acronyms and shorthand is that with acronyms, you pronounce the letters as a new word — for example, SNAFU is pronounced “sna-foo” and RADAR is pronounced “ray-dar.” In shorthand, the letters are pronounced one-by-one — not pronounced as a word. FYI is pronounced “F-Y-I” and GMA is pronounced “G-M-A.”
On the Internet, there seems to be little difference between shorthand and an abbreviation. I always though that an abbreviation referred to the shortening of a word — like, “esp” for “especially.” And just to mess things up more in my mind, some of the shorthand/abbreviations aren’t even shorter than the original phrase.
Here’s some things I found looking through some old texts and e-mails:
buhbye — apparently means “bye;” c ya — means see ya; dewd — dude?dunno — I don’t know; girl — girls; guvment — government; i h8 it — I hate it; kewl — cool; sok — it’s ok; ur — your
So whether you call these things abbreviations, acronyms, shorthand, or whatever, their use has evolved into a language of its own.
I wonder what some of my old English teachers would think about this….
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