Abuse of acronyms or just lazy?

[Data]

You've probably encountered this but I think it's out of hand. You'll be browsing a forum somewhere, anywhere and you're likely to read a few posts where the author has taken the slap dash way and shortened a sentence worth of words into an acronym. Maybe they are poor spellers, maybe they're in grade school, maybe they don't speak English well or maybe they can't type. Either way, the initiative to write a sentence that everyone can decipher is lacking at best.

I can forgive a sentence that has been automatically translated by programs because it's near impossible to translate a technical question without losing something but when guys are typing out God of War 2 as GOW2, DAO (Dragon's Age Origins), ME2 (Mass Effect 2) it insults my intelligence. How am I or anyone not familiar with the trendy games supposed to know what the meaning is. I skip over these posts and possibly leave a negative rep depending on how bad it is because it's not worth my time to sit there and figure out what the acronym stands for.

It's not just in video game forums but everywhere. Technical websites spit out acronyms like smb (Small and Medium Business) and pcm (Pulse-Code Modulation) and Irbm (it really bugs me).

PC (petty complainer)

CIO (chiefly ignorant oaf)

HP (hapless plonker)

2

^-----File it up #

[Areala]

You've probably encountered this but I think it's out of hand. You'll be browsing a forum somewhere, anywhere and you're likely to read a few posts where the author has taken the slap dash way and shortened a sentence worth of words into an acronym. Maybe they are poor spellers, maybe they're in grade school, maybe they don't speak English well or maybe they can't type. Either way, the initiative to write a sentence that everyone can decipher is lacking at best.

I can forgive a sentence that has been automatically translated by programs because it's near impossible to translate a technical question without losing something but when guys are typing out God of War 2 as GOW2, DAO (Dragon's Age Origins), ME2 (Mass Effect 2) it insults my intelligence. How am I or anyone not familiar with the trendy games supposed to know what the meaning is. I skip over these posts and possibly leave a negative rep depending on how bad it is because it's not worth my time to sit there and figure out what the acronym stands for.

It's not just in video game forums but everywhere. Technical websites spit out acronyms like smb (Small and Medium Business) and pcm (Pulse-Code Modulation) and Irbm (it really bugs me).

PC (petty complainer)

CIO (chiefly ignorant oaf)

HP (hapless plonker)

2

^-----File it up #

I don't have a problem with people dropping acronyms once they've identified their subject matter; writing out "God of War 3" every time I want to mention it after the first couple of times gets annoying both to type and to read. Abbreviating it as GOW3 is simple, and everyone knows what I'm talking about by then. But the posts that start out, "Was playing ME2 yesterday, but I gotta say it's no DAO or KOTOR" bother me to no end.

I blame texting. But then again, I was an English major, so that's going to be where I direct my vitriol.

*huggles*

Areala

[Mister Zero]

I agree with Areala. It bugs me sometimes online, but I can always look it up or find the subject heading. What I hate is how often they're becoming used in real life.

The thing that bugs me most is how fast food joints now seem to use them more often on their billboards. Phrases like "LTO" and the like. Hell, I can't remember the rest because they were so obscure. The acronym MSRP(manufacturers suggested retail price) is used a lot by car dealerships even though not everyone knows what it means. I can understand why these are used in place of the full phrase, but you'd have to be an avid TV commercial junkie to catch it.

[E-Day]

Especially when they start talking about GoW2. Are they talking about God of War 2 or Gears of War 2? I pretty much all acronyms. If someone mentions the games full name initially, and then uses the acronym after that, that is fine. Magazines do that all the time with all sorts of things. The acroyms that annoy me most are the ones that have been around for a long time: LOL, BRB, IMHO, YMMV, etc.

The only thing worse than that stuff is when people try sounding cool by saying things like "full of fail", "(that) is win", "epic fail", "lulz", "moar", and all that other internet crap.

[Thor]

OISIWDIA

(Oh, I'm sorry I wont do it anymore.)

Just kidding. Actually it doesn't bother me all that much really depending on what it is. LOL I don't mind because it expresses emotion such as does.