A couple of days ago, I ranted a tiny bit about my preference for texting entire words rather than the cutesy text shortcuts. I noted that I was particularly annoyed by the abbreviation of short words, specifically “jk” for joke and “k” for okay. 

A dear friend sent me an email explaining that “jk” means just kidding, not joke. She included the following explanation:

Omg is different than OMG!  Where the first represents surprise the second is “total shock”.

bff is different than BFF         As a female I don’t think I have to explain this one

Okay is different than ok is different than ‘k  

          Okay I hear you and I will clean my room – I promise

          Ok that sounds good to me

          ‘k  alright I’m thinking about it & probably yes

LOL is different than Lol is different than lolololol

          LOL  a big hearty laugh

          Lol   Laugh & smile

          lololol  Smile & chuckle

?        please answer the question

 ….?     do you agree      

 …….?  I hope you are still speaking to me

Now, I found this particularly illuminating especially the bit about the question marks standing alone or preceded by an ellipse or two. It goes a long way towards explaining some recent texts from another friend who likes to have philosophical debates via text. NJ. I think this means no joke, but it could mean nose job or nobody’s jujubees. How can I be sure without a dictionary?

Of course, I realize that most of these text abbreviations were thought up by teenagers, but I do not wish for my communications to sound as if they were typed, or in the case of texting thumbed, by a 1990’s vintage valley girl. So I will continue to thumb out each word.

You, however, are free to abbreviate to your heart’s content. If you decide to abbreviate with me, just keep in mind that if I think “jk” means joke and “nj” could mean nobody’s jujubees, no telling what I’ll come up with for your abbreviations. Because like those 1990’s valley girls, I’m too lazy to look it up.

I am a reluctant texter. I’m not fond of typing on my phone with my thumbs. Being a language purist, I feel the need to correctly spell every word and use proper punctuation. No cutesy abbreviations for me, though I recently have succumbed to the occasional LOL, but I do it lower case, which might mean that I’m not laughing very loudly.

Even though I don’t like typing these abbreviations, I do like to sprinkle an occasional OMG or WTF into actual spoken conversations with other humans. (I sometimes have spoken conversations with dogs, or cats, or a donkey, but the conversations are usually one-sided, which probably makes them soliloquies.)  I’m particularly fond of saying, “That made me LOL out loud.” (I stole this quote from a television show, so extra points if you can identify the show.)

I don’t always understand the abbreviations that are texted my way, forcing me to reveal my lack of text language fluency and ask “What do you mean?” Though what I really want to type is “WTF, why don’t you spell every word?” That would probably be rude. 

I find it particularly annoying when single short words are abbreviated. I’ve seen “jk” for joke. Seriously, are people so crunched for time that they can’t spare the two nanoseconds it would take to type two more letters? Even worse is the lonely “k” which is short for ok (or the more formal okay).  I’ve even seen some texts with an apostrophe in front of the “k” denoting that the texter knows there should be a letter “o” before the “k.” So you’re going to type two characters, and you choose to type ‘k instead of ok? Am I the only one who wants to scream?

Now I know I said something in the second paragraph about extra points if you could identify the source of my stolen quote. There are no extra points, there aren’t any points at all, it’s just something people say. You can, however, swell with pride at having the correct answer to this bit of trivia.  So if you know the answer, leave a comment and name the show, but please, no abbreviations.