Alphabet soup

Many acronyms meant to be written have wormed their way into spoken languagejust ask your BFF,or the co-worker who prefaces everything with FYI. Lately,this is also the case for Internet slang.

First developed about 20 years ago to streamline conversation on chat platforms like Usenet and IRC and popularised on AOL instant messenger and Gmail chat,terms like LOL laugh out loud,OMG oh my God and BTW by the way now seem to be popping up in real life IRL.

Some would prefer it to stop. Larry David,chronicler of modern irritants,scolded a friends wife on a recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm for constantly saying LOL rather than laughing.

If youre going to laugh out loud, why arent you laughing out loud? he pleaded.

Many a Facebook group has been formed to decry the habit,like Stop Saying LOL in Real Life,You Sound Like an Idiot. A video on Funny or Die explores what happens when a man reacts to a friends joke by saying ROFL rolling on the floor laughing at a party. Hint: It ends in violence. And on a recent episode of NBCs Parks and Recreation,Rob Lowes unflappably positive character exclaimed OMG from the backseat of a car moments before the driver decided to drown him out with banjo music.

Typically,the letters are spoken: its oh em gee, not ahmguh. Some people pronounce LOL to rhyme with bowl,but they seem to be in the minority and risk adding confusion to their list of social fouls. Others go so far as to verbalise emoticons: smiley face!

The road from Usenet to cocktail party chatter was largely paved by texting,said David Crystal ,a noted linguist based in Wales. After all,Internet abbreviations had been part of techie jargon for years before anyone thought to weave them into conversation. That only began to happen once text messaging became a part of daily life.

The U.C.L.A. Slang Dictionary,a compendium published every four years of the newest language on that campus,first included an entry for LOL as a spoken word in the 2005 edition. But Pamela Munro,the editor of the dictionary,said the practice didnt really take off until a few years after that. She has since heard students pronounce everything from JK for just kidding to IDK for I dont know.DOUGLAS QUENQUA