Thursday, April 22, 2010

OMG IONO Wa UR Saying!

Every generation has its slang and every industry its acronyms. Most of these abbreviations are just alphabet soup to outsiders. But if you are going to join an industry or snoop on your teenagers, you have to learn the lingo.

There are many abbreviations that have multiple meanings. Take GIS - I learned it as Gas Insulated Substation. The first time I heard GIS used as meaning Geographic Information System, it was in the context of "we need to update the GIS with the latest maps." It didn't make any sense at all. At the risk of embarrassing myself and sounding stupid, I asked what does GIS mean? You'd have thought I had two heads. After that I made a policy that acronyms have to be defined before they are used. I compiled a list of acronyms for our industry and put them in a manual and later and eBook. Not many people want to know what SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) means, but there are some that live for this information!

As you know, the military is great for acronyms and has some very flowery ones. Parents have to know what PAW, POS and P911 mean as well as a host of others that describe what your children are doing. Scan through the list and I think you will be surprised at the number of text message abbreviations dedicated to specific actions and emotions.

Will this generation destroy the world with text messaging? I don't think so. Every generation was going to destroy the world because of their reckless abandon and callous disregard for the way society works. Look rock-n-roll music, mini-shirts, MTV, the Internet and text messaging - each a danger in itself, but here we are. The analog generation figured it out and I think this millennium generation will too.
BTW, text abbreviations work for casual communications, but don't use in business correspondence or resumes. If you are not hip with the current lingo, look it up before retweeting or repeating. There are several sites that have deciphered lists. NetLingo has a good list with tips.

OMG IONO Wa UR Saying! means Oh my gosh, I don't know what your are saying!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.