Pluggers by Rick McKee for February 27, 2023

I’m that kind of plugger myself.

I know TBH is “to be honest”, IDK is “I don’t know”, ILY is “I love you”, and TTYL is “talk to you later”, but I’m unfamiliar with FWIW nor MU. Does anyone know without looking them up?

FWIW is “for what it’s worth.” MU I don’t know either…

Many of these got their start in ham radio when you were sending morse code. .. -. is CQ, short for SEEK YOU (is anybody out there?). YL is Young Lady (i.e. girlfriend). XYL is wife. UR is your. etc.

Good grief! I’m not that kind of texter. Sounds too robotic. Sometimes I use R for Rambo, my little doggie.

I don’t speak acronymic.

It’s hard enough nowadays typing on a small touch tone screen, and also sometimes on a slippy-slide flat laptop keyboard, when I grew up typing on electric and Selectric solid typewriters—-moving my fingers rapidly without looking at the keyboard.

Eh me not bother to respond to lazybones who not types full words.

I feel this plugger has fallen through a time warp. These are more from the old Nokia days, when typing on the little keypad was work unlike just waving your finger over the keyboard and having it deduce your meaning by magic.

As long as they don’t think “LOL” means “Lots of love”! Ackwardness will ensue if you send a text along the lines of, “I just heard your Aunt Millie died. LOL!”

Texting is the modern version of Morse Code … One must practice it in order to know it ;-)

I know what WTF means…….

I don’t du text short hand as there can be several translations.

When I was in the military, three most oft used acronyms were FUBAR, SNAFU and BOHICA or BOHHCA. This was long before texting was even thought of.

FWIW means For What’s It Worth and MU means Miss You.

In the English-speaking world, the first known acronyms cropped up in the telegraphic code developed by Walter P. Phillips for the United Press Association [UPA] in 1879. The word, acronym, was created in 1943, from the Greek ‘Akron’ [topmost] and ‘onyx’ [name/word]. Initialisms began around 1868 when the initial letters of authors’ names were used on publications instead of their full name, although they didn’t come into popular use until the early 1960’s when acronyms came into vogue.

The difference between acronyms and initialisms is that an acronym can be (and is) pronounced as a single word, while an initialism is pronounced as a series of letters. FYI is an initialism, TANSTAAFL is an acronym.

Acronyms and initialisms save time and space for the writer (or speaker) but they can confuse, mislead, intimidate the audience. Many are exclusive for particular technical or scientific fields or geographic locales (e.g., medicine, IT). Many have multiple meanings. Sometimes we forget that writing and speaking is supposed to be ways to communicate — to share or exchange information, news, ideas. Communication only succeeds when the audience can understand the message.

Acronyms are a group of letters that are pronounced as a word such as NATO/SNAFU/SCUBA/LIFO/FIFO. Initialism is when you pronounce the letters such as FBI/US

I have no idea what FWIW or MU mean and, truthfully, I don’t really care.

Well THIS Plugger is slow to respond to texts because although he can type over 100 wpm on a standard keyboard, he has neither the dexterity nor the patience to equal that rate on an itty-bitty phone keyboard. If you text this Plugger, and he considers you important enough to merit a response, he will use his phone as a phone and CALL you.

Nope. None of them. And clearly NBD!

Have a plugger friend who refuses to learn any.

Young lovers used to put SWAK on the back of the letters they wrote each other…

When I got my first CB radio in 1975 I memorized all the 10 codes, I thought I’d need to know them for a license. KBY0794 was my license.

IHYM!

Do people still use those abbreviations when texting? In my experience it went out with flip phones. Back in those days, you had to hit a number anywhere from two to four times to get a letter into a text, so it paid to abbreviate everything. But now that we all have smartphones with full keyboards (even dog-man here), most everybody I know just types full words (or lets auto-complete type the last few letters).

WT?

No I don’t. If you can’t spell, don’t write junk, Call. It’s also a phone…..

Then there’s the one who makes up her own and expects everyone else to understand them. LOL. Eg. TK for thanks. (TY)

This is why I don’t belong in the texting world. I spell words out, and I have never even used “LOL.” For me, texts are few, and far between.

I agree with those above who say they wouldn’t respond to this. An occasional abbreviation in a message is fine. Sending this nonsense to me would result at best in a return message of “speak English or shut up”..

We don’t give out cell phone numbers to many people. Our 3 siblings, their spouses and children, my mom, the other board members of our reenactment unit and the other board members of my embroidery chapter. My accounting clients don’t even have my cell number.

As a result better than 90% of the non-spam text messages are between the two of us (especially since husband has rather limited phone minutes). Messages between us generally are of the “ok” – “ok” variety. As in – Me “ok” (dinner is ready), him “ok”, me “ok” (he has come back in from running the RV engine. Or “Front door” – either of us (this can also be a store department) reply “ok” by the other. This was used back before Covid when we would go in stores and wander away for something to do and do so separately. It means “I am at the front door and ready to leave” “ok, on my way”. or “I am in the shoe department, come here” “ok”.

My sister tends to send text messages while we are sleeping, we don’t hear them (even though phone in bedroom) and I don’t know she send them until it is time to call husband for dinner or I find the message while out. If neither of these things happen – it can be days before I find her text messages.

On the other hand since 4 Presidential election cycles ago “the other party” has send me spam emails during election time and other times. It started with a local congressman – not one whose district I am in – sending them to me and continued to the point where in the last election I received text messages from people running for congress or senate states on the other side of the country – all asking for money. At one point I was getting over 20 of these a day.