Those of us of a certain age probably tend to use correct spelling and punctuation and so on when emailing or texting someone, partly out of habit and partly because using a lowercase i as a pronoun just looks so wrong and perhaps partly so we can lift a mildly scornful eyebrow at kids today.
On the other hand, texting abbreviations and acronyms are kind of fun. More importantly, in SHADOW TWIN, Miguel and Cassie spend most of the book in separate locations, so they frequently text back and forth. They’re a lot younger than I am and a lot more used to texting, so they use far more acronyms and abbreviations than I do.
This is the extremely long list of texting acronyms I used when putting together their texted conversations. I tried to use a combination of familiar acronyms we probably all know (FWIW, FUBAR), acronyms that are readily deciphered, and plain English. But some acronyms I particularly liked also crept into these conversations, even though I don’t know whether they’re quite that familiar.
Hopefully the resulting text conversations will be understandable even if the occasional acronym might be mysterious. But on the chance some of you might find a list of acronyms helpful, here are the ones that appear in Shadow Twin:
AFK — Away from keyboard
BAMF — Bad-ass motherfucker
BG2CU — I’m sure this is too obvious for words — Be good to see you
DKFS — Don’t know for sure
HRU? — How are you?
FUBAR — Fucked up beyond all recognition
FWIW — Here’s one we all know — For what it’s worth
KIT — Keep in touch
LMAO — standard these days, but — Laughing my ass off
LOLH — Laughing out loud hysterically
L8R — obviously this means — Later
RGI — Real good idea
ROTFLUTS — Rolling on the floor laughing unable to speak
RSN — Real soon now
RYT — Are you there?
TGIO — Thank God it’s over
VDE — Very damn early
WTG — Way to go
YGTBKM — You’ve got to be kidding me
YMMV — Your mileage may vary
YYSSW — and my personal favorite, which I learned while looking up text abbreviations for this book — Yeah yeah sure sure whatever
Out in FOUR days:
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There were several in that list that I didn’t know and could not (completely) guess: I did recognise LOL but not LOLH and couldn’t guess what the H stood for, but if someone just knows LOL and reads it as that, it doesn’t really make a lot of difference.
YYSSW is one I’d never have guessed.
Maybe a glossary in the back of the book?
I didn’t know YYSSW either.
I did recently find out that “Let me Google that for you” wasn’t just something that my husband and I say, because someone used the acronym version of it in an avclub comment (LMGTFY).
Oh dear… I’m feeling ancient. I just remembered when I was young and carefree (early Creataceous era, when we used to yell at the dinosaurs to get offa the lawn). People used to use the acronym TANSTAAFL. I’ll have to try that on a young whippersnapper, just to confound them.
Well, too late to add a glossary just now — it’d interfere with the release date. I should have thought of that. I will say, YYSSW is googleable — I tried it and it came right up. It’s a fun one, so if readers are puzzled, I hope they do take a second to look it up.
I’ll have to remember LMGTFY because I certainly do say that from time to time!
Thank you for this! I was never confused enough that I needed to get out of the book and try Google, but there were a few I didn’t know.
Very curious to know what’s going on with Cassie!
Very curious to know what’s going on with Cassie!
Good, good, glad to hear it! So was I. This was one where I really could not figure out what was happening back home. My brother finally gave me the essential idea and now I am pretty happy with this novella.