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Remember, BMW is the car, and BTW precedes a bombshell

By Ed Goldman

When texting more or less replaced the telephone call, most of us thought it would improve communications between and sometimes even among us (e.g., group texts, so we always know what our nieces traveling in another country are having for dinner). 

But texting also gave us written proof we’d not only been invited to lunch at a specific time and location but also that the inviter had said, “My treat!” 

We even assumed the cause of literacy would be served since we’d all be writing and reading again instead of just randomly yammering. 

It was not to be. (Those are also the words my director used, when I was a memory-challenged actor, to tell me I’d guessed wrong about what the fifth line of my soliloquy in “Hamlet” was.) 

But I transgress.

Texting didn’t facilitate our return to being people of letters. In fact, it’s provided a medium for us to hammer finishing nails into the sarcophagus of intelligent discourse. 

If you’d stepped out of the room when the Textmaster Gods issued some of the abbreviations you’d need to learn, you had to be mystified to discover that…:

IYKYK means “If you know, you know,” SMH means “Shaking my head,” OFC means “Of course” and TLDR means “Too long, didn’t read.”

How about YOLO (“You only live once”), OOTD (“Outfit of the day”), or LFG (“Let’s freaking go”—though I have my doubts that “freaking” would be the word of choice in what sounds like an impatient situation). 

Did you know when someone texts you ATP you’re supposed to “Answer the phone”? This one sounds as though “freaking” might be an appropriate adjective to modify “phone.”

How about NGL (“Not gonna lie”), ISTG (“I swear to God”) and DBA, which I’d always thought meant “doing business as,” not “Don’t bother asking.” 

Are you sensing that a lot of these abbreviations were drafted by someone in need of an anger management course? I mean, IIRC (“If I recall correctly”) sounds like someone’s about to smarmily correct your version of an argument you had a week ago. To which it may be better to say NVM (“Never mind”).

Now, we’ve all used abbreviations in our daily lives for decades. We know when we fly, train or walk to a destination we have an ETD and an ETA (estimated times of departure and arrival, respectively). We know that PDA can mean your personal digital assistant (such as your phone or in my case, my wristwatch) or a public display of affection (or in my case, my wristwatch. Just love this little guy).

We (mainly people in public relations) already knew a PSA was a public service announcement, whereas we (mainly men) also knew it as the prostate-specific antigen. We (mainly people in design) knew that PMS stood for the Pantone Matching System, whereas we (everybody who’s ever been a woman or lived with one) also knew it meant pre-menstrual syndrome.

In the automotive world, we know such abbreviations as MPH, RPM, APR and MSRP (miles per hour, revolutions per minute, annual percentage rate and manufacturer’s suggested retail price. For some, the latter was the rare time in their lives they’d read humorous fiction.

But we’ve proved to be remarkably educable. Almost anyone who’s ever received a text would know that LOL means “laughing out loud” (even when not accompanied by a chuckling emoji) that IMHO stands for “in my humble opinion” and that IHOP is currently running an all-you-can-eat pancake special for $5.