Terminology ?

> At 12:28 PM 5/23/97 -0400, you wrote:

What is IIRC?

> "pdga6560" == Brian Bell <pdga6560@csi.com> writes:

pdga6560> What is IIRC? Brian Bell pdga6560@csi.com

IIRC = If I Recall Correctly

> Brian Bell wrote:

If I Remember Correctly :-}

> In message <33862C12.BAB@macquarie.matra.com.au> Brendan Pratt writes:

...or "If I recall correctly"...

The 'net had spawned a plethora of shorthand terms to weaken statements,
because of the tedency for strong statements to lead to unecessary
disagreement and slanging matches.

IMO In my opinion IMHO In my (ironically) humble opinion FWIW For what it's
worth YMMV Your mileage may vary AFAIK As far as I know
AFAIR   As far as I recall/remember

...and so on.

All IMNSFHO, natch.

> David Brewer wrote:

"In My Not So F...... Humble Opinion" ? ? ? :-)

> At 01:25 AM 5/24/97 GMT, David Brewer wrote:

> The 'net had spawned a plethora of shorthand terms to weaken

Actually, many of the short forms that you mention predate the Net. They
actually come into Internet use by way of APAs (amateur press associations).
The first APA dates back to about the 1930s. The one that I belonged to for 5
years usually consisted of people writing articles or essays (usually about
SF, but not always; I ran a series on Scottish castles and castle warfare),
and "mailing comments." Mailing comments were essentially a hard copy version
of Usenet, but usually with a much smaller audience; probably more like the
mailing list but with no restrictions on topicality. In fact, it's the wide
range of topics that I miss. I haven't found anything on the net that is quite
comparable to an APA.

Some of the more common short forms were IMHO, IIRC, LOL, and other Net short
forms. Others aren't used much on the Net, such as:

S,AS: Smiling, Always Smiling (a way to defuse tense wording).
HHOK: Hah, Hah, Only Kidding (essentially the same as the :-)
smiley/emoticon).
REYCTO: RE. Your Comment to... (used in mailing comments to indicate to whom
someone else's comment was for)

> From what I understand, emoticons and Net short forms have slipped into
Usenet and chat lines have killed off a number of APAs.

Just to keep this on an FT topic, does anyone know of any game related APAs
(particularly SF, non-GW games)? I'm just curious if there are any APAs
that might be of interest to FT players. I suspect that there are not, having
been taken over by Usenet and mailing lists.