Does the use of some acronyms annoy you?

[Headdrivehardscrew]

They do tend to annoy me, as I feel it's bad style to assume everyone will just 'get it' or browse through the discussion to find out what it's about.

The last time I felt genuinely annoyed was during the whole GOW/GOW thing. Some people were talking about GOW, others were talking about GOW, and sometimes things wouldn't make sense until someone pointed out that they were talking about God of War, while the others were talking about Gears of War. That wasn't much fun.

I'd like for people to initially properly name the thing in question and spell it out, after that they can abbreviate it to their lazy hearts content. It works in science, so it should also work elsewhere.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

When it comes to games, my policy has always been to write the title of the game in full at least once before starting to use an acronym. If I'm only referring to it once, then I probably don't need to abbreviate it, but if I'm referring to it repeatedly that first use of the full title can explain what the heck I'm talking about.

 

[Vegosiux]

I read through these and all I could think was how frustrating it is when people use initialisms and call them acronyms.
AC is an initialism.
SCUBA is an acronym.

An initialism is an acronym. And while an acronym can include more than the first letter of every word, and can be pronounced as a word (as opposed to a series of letters), it doesn't have to.

I mean, take FAQ for example. It's commonly pronounced either way (though one does sound less appropriiate than the other). Or CD-ROM, that has both characteristics.

What does annoy me is when people add a word after an acronym that was included in the first place. "ATM machine", anyone?

 

[omgeveryone9]

I don't mind obscure acronyms, I just ask them what it means. But two just annoy me: YOLO and LOL
LOL: good online, okay if you mean league of legends, bad if you are saying this in real life
YOLO: used to be good, but then the "mainstream" people used to to mean get drunk, high, and lose your virginity early, and that just ruins lives. If only people can use it to make more meaning to their lives...

 

[Fijiman]

The only one I can think of that gets on my nerves is ZOMG. What the fuck does it mean?!

 

[ColaWarVeteran]

A unique one for my area is the acronym TMI. For most people around the country TMI stands for Too Much Information but in my area of south-eastern Pennsylvania TMI has always been used for the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. This has lead to minor bits of confusion occasionally.

 

[Yopaz]

I dislike it when somebody creates a topic and only uses the acronym. I feel the first time they use mention whatever it is, they should type it out in full to make sure everybody knows what they are talking about.

Otherwise, like most people have said, I will just look it up. It's only because I don't think you should need to look something up to respond to somebodies topic, it's their job to make sure you know what they are talking about. The same goes for when people discuss a news story and don't provide any links and tell people to "look it up" if they ask what they are talking about.

This is how I feel too. It's also great if people use the full name once before the acronym for game, book or movie titles.

When I am browsing gamefaqs and wander into the Tales of Symphonia board I don't need anyone to explain that ToS means Tales of Symphonia even if that would usually refer to terms of service pretty much anywhere else on that site and many other sites.

In a thread made on this site where there's no boards for each game then it might be a bad idea to make a thread asking "Did you like/play BKATLO which is an acronym for Baten Kaitos and The Lost Ocean, especially since the full title is pointless and hardly known by anyone.

Now we can look up most acronyms, but as is the case with Tales of Symphonia looking up tos yields no results for Tales of Symphonia, but I did find a bank, 2 wikipedia articles (one about Terms of Service) Twitter's terms of service page, some school sites and one site about a disease called thoracic outlet syndrome.

 

[AT God]

Using online acronyms in real life makes me angry. I feel compelled to punch people who say OMG in real life.

 

[Cabisco]

A fair few do annoy me to be honest but this is only when you have no idea what they are talking about. Sometimes people forget to put it into context and so you end up just having to ask what they were on about anyway, if just the first time it was mentioned they put it as the full name before using the acronym I would be fine and dandy.

For an example of what I mean:

"I love AC, it's an amazing game"
"Oh, Assassins Creed?"
"No, Armoured Core!"

 

[Ljs1121]

If I can't tell from the context of the post what the acronym stands for, and if said acronym can have more than one meaning, then it does annoy me.

Doesn't bother me that much, though. Typically asking the person what it stands for is a good solution to that problem.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

It only annoys me when there are acronyms that can specifically be confused for more than one thing. Otherwise, I just "Google" the damn thing.

 

[Zantos]

It only annoys me in two situations. One is when it's ambiguous, either use the name of what you're talking about or some description about what it is. I mean, 'the game GoW' is unhelpful. 'The shooter/hack n slash' or 'Gears of War/God of War', much better.

The other is when people get annoyed that you're using the wrong acronym, because you've abbreviated it differently. I've had someone private message me before about how it was hard to understand what I was talking about when I put 'ES IV: Oblivion' when the *correct* way to do it is 'TES IV: Oblivion'. You can argue until the cows come home about which one you'd prefer, but I don't think anyone would actually call that problematic. Apart from, you know, those that did call it problematic.

 

[AwesomeDave]

The instant someone says YOLO... I want to stab them in the face with an angry badger.

 

[TheRussian]

Only when the acronym itself spells out a word. That's exactly the sort of thing an acronym is supposed to avoid.

 

[McMarbles]

People who use "lol" to end every sentence, lol. That kind of thing drives me crazy, lol. People seem to use it as punctuation, without any context, lol.

 

[Dan Steele]

DS

could mean

Dark Souls
Demon Souls
Dead Space
Demon Scrolls

 

[kailus13]

It really depends on whether they (or someone else) explains what the acronym actually means. For a couple of months I was wondering why everybody was randomly loling in the middle of their sentences before realising my mistake.

 

[AdmiralMemo]

Some ones have to depend on context, like I know OP would stand for opening post here.

While it has the same essential meaning, I always thought OP meant "original poster" not "opening post"

(Then, there's the confusion when you get into a gaming thread and OP means "over-powered" instead.)