Do you feel like a bowl of alphabet soup?
The other day, I was in a meeting and it seemed like every other word was an acronym. There was NCLB, EETT, SIF, SIFA, EIMS, USDOE, DOE, OET, and host of others. And don’t forget that we in the library have our own set of initials–LLAA, OPAC, to name a couple. Why do we insist on using these verbal shortcuts? Do you ever feel that you need a cheat sheet?
I remember reading a Tom Clancy book one time that it seemed like every possible combination of letters and numbers were used to identify weapons and aircraft. I became so frustrated that I could not finish reading the book.
This tendency to abbreviate is so prevelant among our young people. They use shortened alpha-numeric combinations in their text messaging and their instant messaging (also known as IM-I actually typed IM at first!). I am shocked at the number of Emails that I receive from persons asking for information from the Department of Education that contain abbreviations, poor grammar and punctuation skills.
Am I getting old, or do others find this trend troubling?
