The concept of having and explaining abbreviations in posts is surely interesting.
But if I am honest, I think that when somebody writes a post, it shouldn’t be too much of a burden on that poster to try and write plain and full English.
I pretty much always find it to be some unnecessary distraction when people use abbreviations.
(except for more common ones that you would find in somewhat more serious literature such as: i.e., et al., etc. …)
Is it really that much of a brain- and time- saving exercise to write something like A.F.A.I.K instead of “as far as I know”?
Is it really that hard to type “If I recall correctly” instead of “IIRC”?
And does the minor brain- and time- saving that perhaps (and I even doubt that) benefits the poster, validates the extra strain and effort on all readers?
And do take into account that not all forum members and readers are native English speakers.
For many of them (us) learning, reading, and expressing themselves in English is already an effort.
Additionally having to manage and understand all sorts of abbreviations, or having to hover over some explanatory pop-up is an additional and distracting effort.
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I am aware this is mainly some general and unfocused rant/observation, but I thought it would be good to voice some counter weight against promoting and supporting the use of abbreviations too much.
I agree 200%, I’ve never really enjoyed reading English abbreviations, including eg and ie.
Hopefully for eg and ie, there is this helping Disclose plugin.
A public service announcement, commonly known by the PSA acronym, is a message spread in the interest of the public. The objectives of PSAs are to raise awareness and change public attitudes, opinions, or even behavior towards an issue. These messages can be instructional, inspirational, or even shocking to elicit emotion and action.
Goto https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBBE-22
Find there “weird SEO sites […] more SEO sites” but its meaning only implied (“Google Analytics ID […] Google Adsense […] Adsense ID is used”)
Goto MB Documentation search for ‘SEO’, get 1 relevant hit: Contact - MetaBrainz Foundation : “We are evaluating advertising, traffic optimization, search engine optimization and … For inquiries about advertising, SEO optimization, or software monetization …”
Aha, ‘search engine optimization’ matches ‘SEO’.
Goto Wikipedia search hit article search engine optimization for verification of meaning, though still supposed.
(By the way, on that MetaBrainz contact page in the background, the “SEO optimization” is an ugly RAS syndrome carrier.)
