Group items tagged

This article discusses the history of acronyms and how they evolved from initialism. It also talks about the difference between the two, which is that initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the actual letters (i.e. AFK and BRB), while acronyms are abbreviations pronounceable by its letters (i.e. SCUBA and NASA). Over time, the word "acronym" was used to describe all abbreviations formed by the initial letters of each word, leading to the extinction of initialism.

This article talks about how poems, acronyms, rhymes, and acrostic helps us to remember things.

New and unexpected acronyms are taking over our texting universe. "Any idea what 'IWSN' stands for in Internet slang? It's a declarative statement: I want sex now." I honestly didn't know what "IWSN" stood for and it's surprising to see that teenagers are actually using these acronyms as secret codes for illegal/inappropriate actions.

Very interesting article about acronyms. "They may be a quintessentially modern annoyance, fooling us into thinking we have a greater grip on life's complexities than we really do. But that goes hand in hand with the wonders of the modern world: I'll take COPD and modern drugs over tuberculosis in 1910 any day."

An article about Congress's predilection for making bill titles into acronyms, e.g.: - SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) - PROTECT-IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) - E-PARASITE (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation) - REPEAL (Revoke Excessive Policies that Encroach on American Liberties) - BOSS ACT (Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing)

Many acronyms meant to be written have wormed their way into spoken language - just ask your BFF, or the co-worker who prefaces everything with "FYI." Lately, this is also the case for Internet slang. Whether the practice will leave a permanent mark on the language remains to be seen.

That's because lol and lmao have evolved, and are now predominantly used as tone indicators, explains John Kelly, the Associate Director of Content and Education at Dictionary.com. As we increasingly spend our lives online and communicate largely through digital messages, the paralinguistic functions we use IRL to convey emotion, tone and nuance - i.e. body language, gesturing, facial expressions - gets lost in our texts, emails, Slack messages and tweets. So we have to rely on different things to do that, like emojis and text acronyms. So what are we trying to communicate when we sign off our text messages with a lol? It's not because we're literally laughing out loud; rather, we're using this lowly little acronym to try and soften the tone of our messages.

In my humble opinion? In my honest opinion? Alexis Madrigal, the author, suggests how the dueling dual definitions came to be: "I'd say that IMHO, which developed as a way to reduce miscommunication through the indication of a lighthearted, ironic tone, became itself a form of miscommunication, as those unfamiliar with the original meaning backed into one, inserting honesty where humility once stood. IMHO, there is no debate. But it's the internet, so of course there is a debate."

This article frames itself from the perspective of a writer in the 23rd century. It talks about the ways that languages has evolved due to the 21st century. For example, English has returned to having two forms of 2nd person: u and you. You is now formal and u is the informal version. The article talked about acronyms like omg and rotfl have changed conversation. It also indicates that 21st century created a distinction between uncapitalized and all caps. For example, OMG and omg have slightly different connotations.

Useful info for all collaborative activities. The 3 takeaways: 1. SET THE AGENDA The meeting's agenda can be summarized on a handout, written on a whiteboard or discussed explicitly at the outset, but everyone should know why they've gathered and what they're supposed to be accomplishing. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation, so the meeting can get back on track if the discussion wanders off course. 2. ​START ON TIME. END ON TIME. A definitive end time will help ensure that you accomplish what's on your agenda and get people back to their work promptly. 3. ​END WITH AN ACTION PLAN Leave the last few minutes of every meeting to discuss the next steps. This discussion should include deciding who is responsible for what, and what the deadlines are. Otherwise, all the time you spent on the meeting will be for naught. Mark Toro, managing partner of North American Properties - Atlanta, a real estate operating company, uses a phrase to end meetings that has become a common acronym in office e-mails: W.W.D.W.B.W., which stands for "Who will do what by when?"

This article talked about how our language has changed recently because of the internet. The purpose of texting is to send short, efficient messages, so our language has reflected that. We now use more acronyms and speak informally when we are talking to people online. An example of how language has changed is our use of periods. Since we speak less formally, we don't use periods as often. So now, when we receive messages that come with periods we interpret them as passive-aggressive. This can be problematic because the age people joined the internet plays a big role in how we interpret messages online. So there is often lots of miscommunication between people of different ages because we interpret language differently.

Charting linguistic change was once a painstakingly slow task, but a new analysis of nearly one billion Tweets - presented on 17 April 2018 at the Evolang International Conference on Language Evolution in Torun, Poland - now offers us an unprecedented glimpse of this process in action. According to this new research, most of the more recent coinages will have originated in one of five distinct hotspots that are driving American English through continual change. More than 20% of Americans were using Twitter at the time of the study - and each Tweet is timestamped and geocoded, offering precise information on the time and place that particular terms entered conversations. The researcher behind the study, Jack Grieve at the University of Birmingham, UK, analysed more than 980 million Tweets in total - consisting of 8.9 billion words - posted between October 2013 and November 2014, and spanning 3,075 of the 3,108 US counties. From this huge dataset, Grieve first identified any terms that were rare at the beginning of the study (occurring less than once per billion words in the last quarter of 2013) but which had then steadily risen in popularity over the course of the following year. He then filtered the subsequent list for proper nouns (such as Timehop) and those appearing in commercial adverts, and he also removed any words that were already in Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Acronyms, however, were included. The result was a list of 54 terms, which covered everything from sex and relationships (such as "baeless" - a synonym for single), people's appearance ("gainz" to describe the increased muscle mass from bulking up at the gym), and technology ("celfie" - an alternative spelling of selfie). Others reflected the infiltration of Japanese culture (such as "senpai", which means teacher or master). They also described general feelings, like "litt" (or "litty" - which means impressive or good - or affirmations such as "yaaaas

Language is a constantly changing, ever so malleable part of our world. While it's natural for languages to change over time, social media has seemed to accelerate the pace at which language is evolving. The quick-paced spreading of information and ideas can be seen for acronyms, catchy phrases, and beliefs.

This article heavily focussed on some of the ways in which language has been affected by social media. Particularly how there have been more acronyms or shortening of words to fit a more limited media.