SMH OR NBD? TXT TLK
If you can read that and understand it, the social media and texting craze of abbreviations and acronyms has become a part of your life, possibly even a part of your real life conversations.
It seems that girls have more of a tendency to use texting lingo in common conversation than guys.
“I use them all the time, especially ‘JK,’ ‘LOL,’ ‘LMFAO,’ and ‘WTF’,” Trish Watson, a senior communications studies major, said. “I use them around my friends and family; my mom’s always like, ‘What are you talking about?'”
Guys typically either don’t use texting jargon when they speak at all, or they use it in a comical sense.
“I say ‘BRB’ sometimes,” Tyler Dinwiddie, a kinesiology sophomore major, said. “It’s not serious, it’s to be funny.”
Some people say them to get a rise out of others.
“I use texting lingo all the time. ‘JK,’ I really don’t,” Alejandro Kuenzle, a 2011 alumnus, said. “If I do, it is usually with my 13 and 16-year-old sisters. I’ll say ‘JK,’ ‘BRB’ and ‘LOL,’ usually to make them mad. It’s fun for me. With my parents it’s the same thing. It’s never serious.”
The most common acronym students tend to say out loud is “JK.” It is used to after a joke or when someone says something slightly insulting to lessen the blow. “JK” can also be used after somebody says something, and realizes what they’ve said is incorrect.
Students who don’t regularly use texting jargon are sometimes influenced by their peers.
“I’ll say ‘JK’ or ‘LOL’ when I’m with a certain friend because she says them,” Cora Countryman, a junior geology major, said. “Normally, I don’t say them out loud though.”
Other students find that the say them aloud under certain circumstances.
“If I’m in a rush to get something out, I’ll say ‘OMG’ to interrupt so I don’t forget what I want to say,” Brandy McLaughlin, a freshman Forensic Chemistry major, said.
Some students frown upon it.
“I never use it in real life, only in texting because it’s not proper language or grammar,” James Brown, a senior business management major, said.
The one thing all students seem to agree on, guys and girls alike, regarding texting idioms is that there is a time and place for them.
“I’d never do it in a professional setting or when talking to respectable people,” Kuenzle said.
“I wouldn’t use them during an interview or in front of an employer,” Watson said.
