The Abbreviated Version

It’s now become common practice to abbreviate things. I don’t know where this idea first started or why. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough room across the paper, or invoice forms, so a shorter abbreviated version became a more efficient way of doing things. Then there’s all the time that can be saved in reading the abbreviated version.

Maybe if writers had to meet specific minimum word or character counts, it became faster and easier to write things in an abbreviated fashion. If they used the full written word instead of the abbreviated version, maybe they’d go over that suggested character count, and their writing wouldn’t get accepted and published. Or they might appear long winded if they didn't abbreviate some of their words. They might appear like they're trying to fill up their copy or padding their articles.

Think how much more time the cavemen might have had to spend if they had to chisel out the full words on their tablets of stone, or on the cave walls of their homes. Spending time chiseling out words like Doctor, Junior, or even longer words like Corporation, or Television, could have become an all day event back then.

It had to have been much faster, much more time saving for them, if they abbreviated those words to be Dr., Jr., Corp., and TV. Oh that’s right, they didn’t have Television back then. The Corporation of Cavemen, Limited, or should that be The Corp. of Cavemen, Ltd, probably went out of business a long time ago.

You see abbreviations in many different areas, and they become the accepted way of writing things. Refrigerator became fridge. Super Sonic Transport became SST. Long Playing Record Albums got abbreviated to become LP. Those are record albums of music that actually used to get played on record players or turntables back in the day. Then along came 8 tracks, cassettes and CDs.

The abbreviation for CDs could mean either Certificates of Deposit, or Compact Discs. How do you know which meaning someone else is referring to? That depends on the context where you read that abbreviated word of CDs. In areas of finance it would probably refer to Certificates of Deposits. While if you're reading about music, chances are good CDs there would refer to the discs that musicians have recorded their music on.

Maybe CDs actually means music that makes money to be deposited somewhere, to combine both possibilities?

Instructions for knitting and crocheting patterns are written using standard abbreviations for those two crafts. Those instructions might look like a foreign language if you're not familiar with what those abbreviations mean.

In some areas people become so accustomed to using abbreviations, that they start to take their use for granted. They forget, that someone new to that particular area, may not have any idea what those abbreviations stand for. Those readers might be standing there scratching their heads, wondering what in the world is that person talking about or referring to? They might not even be able to understand the sentence, if they don’t know what some of those abbreviations actually mean.

With the growing use of computers and the Internet, abbreviated expressions such as lol, rotf, brb, become commonly used and well known by many who use them in instant messages, emails, message boards and forums.

In the area of Affiliate Marketing, you might see abbreviations such as: html, href, B2B, ROI, CSS, or WYSIWYG just to name a few.

But what if you don’t know what all those abbreviations stand for? As new words become created, the online dictionaries, might not recognize that word as something, that many of us commonly use. Many times, my spell checker will highlight the word blog, or blogging for me. It politely suggests to me that perhaps I meant to type bog, or log, or ogling instead of the words blog or blogging, that I did type, and actually meant to type. So back off spell checker!

If you don’t know what certain abbreviations might mean and that writer hasn’t decided to enlighten you about them, then where do you go to look up the meanings of those unknown abbreviations?

I could perhaps do some research, for the abbreviations I’m not very knowledgeable about, but right now I'm not going to do that. Some people might end up sawing logs, or snoring in the back rows of my reading audience if I did that here. I know you’re out there somewhere, my reading audience that is.

I thought I'd have some say so about where my blog would be located, when those burly blog movers came around to place my blog at it's current location. Who knew, that my blog would be placed on some rural road out in the middle of nowhere, where little if any traffic ever passes by. But I will persevere. It's just a matter of time before you discover my blog on this untraveled road it must have been placed on. I still hold out hope that you will become part of my reading audience.

Back to the topic at hand. If I researched and wrote a post here as to what the actual definitions of html, B2B, CSS, or WYSIWYG, stand for, that writing might be rather dry and boring. That certainly isn't the type of impression I want to leave with my current or future reading audience!

So I propose to write my own creative version of those abbreviations.

Html on my B2B, could mean Hold The Mustard, Lettuce on my Burger to Burger. Or Maybe html stands for Have To Make Land, or Have The Monster Leap or Help The Man Leave. Maybe ROI, really means Relish, Onions, Indigestion or Really Over It! CSS probably stands for something like Could of, Should of Said or Cats Spit Synonyms.

Maybe rotf, really stands for Revenge Of The Frogs, or Right On The Forehead, instead of rolling on the floor. Perhaps WYSIWYG once meant Words You Submit Irritate Writers Youth Groups or Why You Should Instantly Water your Geraniums, or Wrap Your Senses In Wickedly Yearning Gazes instead of What You See Is What You Get.

But think how much time would it take you to read things, or to write them, or to come up with creative versions, like I’ve tried to do here, if we wrote words without abbreviating any of them. Look at all the time I’ve saved you now!

I hope you use that extra 2 minutes and 47 seconds wisely and well.