Use of acronyms (was RE: purl.net/net/cp)

Philippe Verdy wrote:

> "FWIW". What does this mean? Please avoid such non trivial abbreviations
> (they are even less trivial or non-native English readers, 

I do not doubt the difficulty that such acronyms give non-native English 
readers, but think about this: even native readers of English can't guess 
these, so the difficulty for them is not significantly less than for 
non-native readers. 

Face it: everyone who knows what "FWIW" means had to look it up or be told 
at some point -- you're no different from anyone else in this regard.

> I'm fed up of seeing more and more unexplained acronyms appearing 
magically
> in some message and SMS-like "language" in mailing lists; 

Sorry, but you're out of luck: The world today is full of such -- (Even 
you use acronyms: "SMS") -- and you're not going to convince the world to 
stop using them.

You'd be far better off to get over your grudge, find a good reference, 
and start learning.

> I do really hate the SMS language, 

FWIW, the particular acronym you questioned has been around long before 
SMS. I remember seeing it used in the 70's on usenet. 

>and probably, many native English readers too. 

You hate many English speakers? Sorry to hear that (no, I really knew what 
you meant -- just teasing a little ;-)

> You are
> forcing them to look for their definitions elsewhere, and decipher what 
you
> mean, and many be this acronym has several unrelated meanings,or may be
> offensive in some interpretations.

I'm a native English speaker in my 50s and I *still* have to do this 
regularly -- both for English words and acronyms. Just learned "barista" 
recently, for example (surprising, given my love of good coffee!). Online 
dictionaries and acronym finders are one of the top hits on my browser 
favorites list.

Bob