Recently, I was in the midst of dealing with some email issues among students. Someone had sent a message to a group of others that wasn’t received well. The problem was resolved by the end of the day.
However, I was left pondering the original email. I got the gist of it, but couldn’t decipher all of the abbreviations on the document. One in particular had me stumped: HMU.
Now I know things like LOL (Laugh out loud) and TTYL (Talk to you later), but I had not seen this one. Once I Googled it, I discovered why. HMU stands for Hit Me Up, which is probably not something a happily married man will ever encounter in an email or text.
Abbreviations have been around for a long time. Okay became OK long, long ago. Television is rarely said; rather it is TV. We’ve also been asked to RSVP (which does not stand for Respond soon, very promptly, as I thought when I was young) for upcoming nuptials that will form a new Mr. and Mrs.
What’s become more prominent among young people in recent years is that they will refer to all their female teachers as Miss. That works for those unmarried, although many of those ladies choose Ms. as their title. When I tell them that many married women go by Mrs., I often get a blank stare. Perhaps they mean that, but are abbreviating their pronunciation.
If we are watching sports, we often see one team or individual vs. another. Have you ever seen the word versus on television? You might also see the camera light upon the VP of some part of the sports organization or even the CEO.
When you’re in the kitchen, you often see abbreviations on your recipes. I remember learning at a young age that a lowercase t meant teaspoon while a capitalized T meant tablespoon. I still see that, though there is also tsp. or tbsp. Those are key to the directions in making a dish; it’s a big difference between the two measurements!
Directions are also important when you’re trying to get somewhere, whether it is N or SW or ESE. You might be traveling to a St. or an Ave. or a Blvd. But more and more, many of us use our GPS system on our phones to get us where we’re going. And I’ve found that even if I don’t type the address in exactly, my phone still finds the right place. Just as long as I don’t have to call AAA during my trip!
I might leave on my journey in the AM or PM, depending on when I need to get there and how long it will take. It won’t be long and that trip will take place in 2021 AD, which stands for Anno Domini, or the Year of our Lord, not “After Death” as some people seem to think. Jesus likely died around 30 AD, so that wouldn’t even make sense.
You might have noticed that some of these abbreviations use periods after them and others don’t. This has been an evolution in style. When I was young, we had to write A.M. and P.M., with both capitalization and periods. Now you might see it that way but are more likely to just see AM or PM or even a.m. or p.m. B.C. and A.D. also used to always have a period after each letter, but they rarely are seen that way now.
And that leads us back to texting and abbreviations. What amazes me is not the lack of periods, because that’s becoming more acceptable in so many other forms of our abbreviations, but rather how the kids will actually know how to capitalize these short forms but not other things like, oh, I don’t know, people’s names or the first words of sentences. But BRB (Be right back) or BTW (By the way) will somehow manage to have all caps. I guess the shift key does work on their phones.
Is this just a grumpy goose hating change? Nah, I use some of these as well. And now both my phone and my computer try to predict what I will say, and I can just swipe to choose that rather than taking all that time to type things out. Just like using abbreviations saves time, now our technology is doing even more to give us more time to… what exactly? What are we doing with these precious seconds that we are given?
IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), not much. Probably just using that extra time to dive back into social media and discover new ways to shorten what we write.
P.S. I don’t really have anything to add. I just wanted to put down one more abbreviation! ROFL!
P.P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! Stay safe!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is acedious, which means characterized by apathy or sloth, as in, “The teenager was so acedious that he couldn’t even be bothered to capitalize or punctuate his abbreviation for A.M. which led to much confusion.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!