Part 1: Abbreviations

Why do we make simple things so complicated?

Let’s face it – life is complicated and getting worse every day. Technology saves us a tremendous amount of time- until our computer dies, our backup hard drive didn’t, our printer won’t, and our phone lands in the toilet. I could go on and on about this – and I will – but let’s start with the basics.

At least we have shortcuts and abbreviations: LOL, LMK, CU, ETC, &, ‘’, ().

But wait a minute – we speak these words as well.

LOL is short for Laughing Out Loud, LMK is short for Let Me Know, CU for See You, etc. Nice time savers for long phrases.

Hold on a minute: what about the actual names of the abbreviations? Shouldn’t these be brilliantly time saving as well? Of course they should!!

So which genius named them?
‘ – Apostrophe
( ) – Parenthesis
: – Colon (not so bad)
; – Semicolon (really – is this half a colon – isn’t a “period” half a colon??)

&, to round out the inefficient madness, how about the phrase in our title, which represents the act of shortening terms for efficiency and brevity? I think the word is…… abbreviation. Really??