Can someone please direct me to some sort of English<—>Forum Abbreviations dictionary?? I’m new here and I keep trying to read posts but so much of what everyone is typing is abbreviations for things, places, etc. Sadly these forums could be so helpful but they are just confusing me cause I cannot for the life of me read what anyone is writing. Please? Is there a list?? Thank you in advance!!!
Always feel free just to ask, too, if something is hard to figure out. People on here are nice and don’t judge if you can’t follow all the abbreviations.
Actually, they aren’t really necessary here in the Forum. They’re a hold-over from the original Touring Plans Chat app (called Lines) which has a strict character limit for each post and comment. When you’re limited to just a couple of sentences, acronyms and initialisms become very appealing. In my opinion, it doesn’t take that much extra effort to write out full names here where there aren’t any character limits, but old habits are hard to break.
If responding from a full keyboard you’re definitely right. If you’re visiting the forums from a phone or iPad though I can see the abbreviations being useful still…
Plus this way folks can figure out who the newbies are quickly
I agree with you stephyod. I really struggle with the acronyms as well. I understand why they are so useful sometimes but apart from the small handful of very obvious ones, it’s all martian to me