Acronyms are undermining society. This should not be a surprise because social media is at the root of the new language that sprung forth from our cell phones. At least once a week, I’ve been stumped (ALOAWIBS) (LOL) when I come across an unknown acronym.
As professionals, you would think that we would avoid the overuse of acronyms, but we are just as bad as the rest of the social media world. For example, anyone outside the animal welfare world would not know what HBC (Hit By Car) means. We would say the animal was dead, but no, we have to say “dead on arrival” (DOA). It gets confusing when dispatch wants to know if our DOA was HBC. You get the point.
It is a confusing world. On a lark, I Googled to see if there is an app that can help us out. Much to my surprise, there is. The app that I found can only be used on iPhones. Who decided that people who have Apple phones need the acronyms finder more than Android users? Then it hit me, iPhone users are more likely to overuse acronyms. As an Android user, when I come across an acronym that I don’t recognize, I just move on. If the person has to use an acronym to make their point, then the point isn’t all that important.
Soon, I am sure, that there will be an app that help people invent new acronyms. I am hoping that the Android version comes out first. I could shorten my emails with acronyms of my choosing.
Of course, it might be a mistake to ignore acronyms in all places; especially hospitals. I can see why hospital staff might shorten their language in an emergency. However, after the emergency, it would be nice if they moved back to a “normal” language.
We have been using acronyms for so long that some of them are becoming quite annoying. I could live without LOL or RLOL, which really should be ROTFLOL. If you don’t know what any of those mean, you are not missing much. Actually, you aren’t missing anything.
Some in the world would say that I’m wrong. I get that quite often. What would the world be like without a few LOLs in our life?