This post may brand me as hopelessly geriatric (I did recently celebrate a birthday, so maybe it’s warranted). However, I have to say it: I hate abbreviations.
And they’re everywhere. These insidious little strings of letters that are supposed to represent real words are popping up in e-mails, in texts, even handwritten notes.
Today, I opened an e-mail to see the sentence, “He’s OOO until next week.”
OOO? What happened to “Out of Office?” Or, more specifically: What was so unwieldy about the phrase “Out of Office” that we needed to shorten it further, from 11 letters to 3?
When I told my 13-year-old daughter that I was writing a blog post about my hatred for abbreviations, she responded, “Why do you hate abbreviations so much, Mom? And when I say ‘why,’ I mean it as the letter Y.”
Well played, child.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to answer her question. But I have a few theories on why I abhor abbreviations.
1. As someone who grew up in an ancient, pre-text messaging world, I was accustomed to scrawling thank you notes and scribbling long-form essays at school. Perhaps I now feel resentful that my aching hand had to spell out every single word, while today’s kids can make themselves understood using shortcuts. I realize this sounds petty.
2. Sometimes I don’t know what an abbreviation stands for (recent offenders include IYKYK and YMMV) and I have to look it up in Urban Dictionary, which is irritating. This banal task also reinforces that I am old and not trendy, which feels a bit sad.
3. On a deeper level, I can’t help but feel that abbreviating a word shows a lack of care or respect for the person with whom you’re communicating. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant makes a compelling case stating just this. He notes that text abbreviations make people less responsive because they perceive the sender as insincere.
My Gen Z daughters will passionately disagree with this last point. I’m willing to hear their arguments, but I doubt my feelings will change.
So when it comes to abbreviations, I will continue to avoid them 99.9999% of the time. Except on those rare occasions when an abbreviation is actually necessary or part of an inside joke. IYKYK.
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