Say What????
by Gary Woods

We all get a lot of Email and to save time there are abbreviations and acronyms you can use. I'm sure a lot of you have figured what these abbreviations mean, but for those who haven't worked them out, here goes!!

Some of the oldest go back to bulleting board days. For instance <g> is Grin, <s> Smiling, or <y> is Yawning. These simple abbreviations expanded into <GRIN> for Big Grin and one of my favorites <ROTFL> for (Rolling on the Floor Laughing) or the often used <LOL> for Laughing Out Loud.

With instant messaging most of the brackets got dropped so we ended up with Y for Why? U for You, ? for Huh and C for See or Cool.

Acronyms make it easy to inject your personal views into a discussion with prefaces such as PMFJI for "Pardon Me For Jumping In" or IMHO for "In My Humble Option" or FWIW for "For What it's Worth."

The retorts to the previous statements can be LCW for "Loud, Confident and Wrong," AYPI? for "And Your Point Is?" and GOWI for "Get On With It." You can also register your disdain to someone while avoiding expletives with TS for "Tough Stuff," or BFD for "Big Furry Deal."

Perhaps the cutest abbreviations are the symbols that will show up at the end of a sentence. For instance :-) is happy :( is sad and :-D is laughing. Until next time, I'll be ROTFL.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910