After I used the acronym in one of my posts earlier today, a reader wrote to say he is new to the world of ‘blogging’ and wondered what it stood for. (It means “in my humble opinion,” for those of you who didn’t know.) I think I use that abbreviation fairly often here; it’s become habitual for me as an ironic comment on my tendency to sound over-authoritative when I shoot my mouth off. When I typed it today, I had a premonition that it would only be a matter of time before someone relatively new to the net would ask for a translation. This post is for you.

It’s not just a ‘blogging’ term. It is one of a number of time-honored abbreviations from the early days of bulletin boards (BBS’s), chatrooms, usenet groups and email. These days, these acronyms are experiencing a resurgence with text messaging. Other common ones include “BTW”, “YMMV”, “RSN”, “PITA”, “LOL”, “ROFL” “TTFN”, “AFAIK” “WYSIWYG” ,”OTOH”, “RTFM”, and I’m sure you know “FUBAR”, right? Some are pretty obvious, others less so, Here are a couple of compendium lists where you can go to catch up on your chatroom abbreviations:

http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci211776,00.html

And:

http://groups.msn.com/JerseyBeans/acronymsorwhatdoeslolmean.msnw

TTFN
(IITYWTMWYBMAD?)