It was the second time in a week that I had to e-mail a person back and ask what was meant by their cryptic, acronym-laden response to my e-mail.
"What does 'np' mean?" I wrote.
To my mind it means nurse practitioner. Silly me. He wrote back: "No problem."
This e-mailer and lover of acronyms works for Procter & Gamble (P&G), corporate king of acronym usage long before an online conversation culture existed.
For the record, two of my favorite P&G acronyms are YA (year ago) and FMOT (First Moment of Truth), which I found further explanation online as: "when consumers buy our products" -- which makes me wonder, why not just call it WCBOP?
Anyway, I hesitate to even bring up this subject of not knowing what letters like IRL (in real life) represent for fear you think I live under a rock. As it turns out, I'm not alone in worrying about this. And most of these people (whew!) are much younger than I am.
This in itself creates issues. For now you are prey to the FSFNK (Feel Stupid for Not Knowing) Downward Spiral. It goes like this:
1. Someone sends e-mail with FWIW, and you feel stupid for not knowing what it means.
2. You're embarrassed to ask sender for interpretation. You don't want them to think you're not with it.
3. You mull over what to do next. You might ask a colleague. Or Google it.
4. From now on you worry: When will the next time FSFNK moment strike?
Danny Wong knows the feeling. He was new to the job at Blank Label when he received an e-mail for a supplier with: "pls cfm."
"I was new and insecure about myself and was embarrassed to ask what the abbreviation meant," he says. So he pondered it.
This supplier had sent other e-mails with spelling and grammatical errors, "so I thought cfm might have been an error. On the other hand, I was embarrassed to admit I didn't know what it meant. Or I could have played it off as believing it was a typo. I wasn't sure it was safe to assume anything."
Allison C., who didn't want to be identified for fear of her clients knowing she is sometimes clueless about these things, got an e-mail from a client with "OOO."
"What the heck?" she thought. "Clients look to us as an authority on many issues, and I would rather save face by doing a little research than showing I didn't know the lingo."
When author Wendy Kenney saw FTW, she was afraid to ask. Fear not, according to Urban Dictionary, it now means "For the Win," which is like saying, "This is the best."
Which brings me to this: Who makes these up and when do they change⢠When did LOL go from Little Old Lady to Laughing Out Loud?
And if you're going to use them, at least get them right. Ian Greenleigh says a co-worker at his company, Bazaarvoice, sent an e-mail with WTF in the subject line. It was supposed to be WFH (working from home.)
Besides potential inaccuracy, wrong assumptions and confusion, the other issue is efficiency. Internet chats, text messages and Twitter are one thing. But we're talking work here, where you're informing someone that their $5 million shipment is lost at sea. Or that you won't be in the office to meet with the client who's flying in from Tasmania. Don't make me work to figure it out.
Oh, how I long for the simple days of smiley faces. J/K (Just kidding.)
E-mail Andrea Kay at andrea@andreakay.com
