Acronym Rant
So someone on TripAdvisor recently became confused by some acronyms some new users were using, acronyms that I was familiar with but were very uncommon to that forum. After explaining what they meant (DH = Dear Husband, DW = Darling Wife) I went on a bit of a rant…
I think these D acronyms are stupid - does it really save you that much time typing DW instead of Wife? And what’s with all the Ds? GF, BF, and SO all make sense to me as all they do is shorten a word but all these ones that start with D seem like a big fat waste of time - you add a word and then shorten it? And is it just me or does Dear Husband or Darling Wife sound just a little bit condescending/patronizing? It’s like people who go out of their way to use the most complex jargon and technical terms thinking it makes them seem smart or savvy but really they just look like idiots.
The first time I saw it was on a parenting message board my gf is on - when you’re constantly talking about family issues I can see why it might have some usefulness but why not just call everyone SO then? Or some other thing that makes some kind of intuitive sense? If you don’t stand a decent chance of being able to reason it out then it’s too complex.
I mean, really, all the time you save not typing the extra 5 letters in husband (and 2 letters in wife for God’s sake!) you’ll end up losing in the long run having to explain yourself.
Then someone told me that POV stood for Pocketbook Of Values, a coupon book for Las Vegas…
Pocketbook Of Values? Really? That’s incredibly specific. Everywhere else, like Wikipedia for example, POV is Point Of View. Why not just modify it to PBOV? That way it would be much less likely to be misunderstood. Are we so lazy that the extra letter to avoid confusion would really throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing? If so, try PBV maybe.
It’s like a Jane Austin novel where two characters have the exact same name, spelled the exact same way, but aren’t even related! Are we really this lazy and lacking in creativity?
And what’s with having to learn new acronyms for every website you go to? You’ve got to be kidding me. For one thing it’s likely to make new users feel unwelcome or out of their league - that’s no way to build a community.
