Too Big Illustrations and Too Many Acronyms
Submitted by Writerinres on Mon, 05/16/2016 - 8:58am
This is a gentle rant with the purpose of making c99% more readable:
1. Illustrations so big they take over essays and bleed right to new essay list should be trimmed, for the sake of readability.
2. Acronyms are rampant on this site. I know maybe 5% of them and other readers might have the same problem. For the purpose of clarity, could essayists either stop using them, keep them to a minimum, or will OPOL please provide a list that readers can refer to?
Comments
Thank you...I have been wanting to make a comment
similar to your rant. I sometimes stop reading comments the have acronyms.
Someone please tell me what FSC means
I will try to avoid acronyms, I try defining the acronym by word before (b4!) I use it. High five.
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What Bisbo said. I didn't know dat. I do know what FTS means :=)
and use it liberally! Morning rl; have a great day,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
"Former Secretary Clinton"
referring to her (former) position as Secretary of State.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
oh. Okay. n/t
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
'Sokay, RL
I thought it was Flying Spaghetti Creature.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
It is.
It's pretty much all the same.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
As always, the British have a word:
I've a book on classical Greek, published by OUP (oops; edit: Oxford University Press) in 1926, whose author is identified only as
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
So why FSC instead of the more common HRC?
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Hey, EC! I'm guilty of using it heavily, and Bisbonian
is correct that for some (including me), it stands for Former Secretary Clinton.
(For others--it stands for Flying Spaghetti Clinton.)
Simply put, I adopted it to avoid pie fights at TOP, because some bloggers over there considered HRC to be 'disrespectful.' Why, I don't know.
Also, I've noticed that relatively large numbers of my resource links which are tied to FSC or WJC (using their full names), seemed to end up 'dead.' So, I'm hoping that the use of FSC might help keep a few of my links off the chopping block!
(IOW, hopefully, the remarks won't be as easily picked up by search engines.)
We'll see.
Mollie
“Love makes you stronger, so that you can reach out and become involved with life in ways you dared not risk alone.”--Author Unknown
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Interesting. I hadn't heard the HRC is disrespectful bit while
over there yet (And why would someone's actual initials that she calls herself be disrespectful anyway? But whatever.)
It does kinda sound like the sound my cats make before they throw up hairballs, "hrc, hrc, HRC!" But still, she does call herself Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I'll keep it in mind for over there. I kinda like them thinking I'm calling her Secretary when I'm actually calling her Spaghetti.
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I resize images to 500px
on the computer before posting them - that seems to work.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
Morning steve! Ty, I'll try to do that. Enjoy your day, mate :=)
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
You too Gerrit
have a great one
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
LOL! IMHO,
AAAA would 1432
2QT 4 words.
ICWUM, tho.
MEGO with 2 many.
Yep
I call it ABCDEFG Syndrone----- too many acronyms.
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire
What is an "opol" ?
Just kidding, I know who OPOL is (One Pissed Off Liberal), much loved blogger here and Over There.
But I kind of agree about acronyms, it's kind of 'insider talk' and if you want to absorb newbies into the group it's offputting. I'm not a newbie to blogs, but even I have trouble parsing some stuff here.
It's my understanding that the admin can
set a fixed size for all youtube videos.
Acronyms can be frustrating, but once you know all of 'em,
it's kinda fun.
I can acronym the shit out of anything now, and if I don't know what it means, I can usually guess from the context. If that doesn't work, I just ask in the moment.
I'm sorry it leaves you frustrated, though. :/ I've not seen the illustration bleeds, I don't think.
I miss Colorado.
How about an acronym list?
As a resource for people to refer to? Would that work? You'd want it to be alphabetical, so somebody would have to compile it, but we could collect suggestions of what to include from members...
I think that's a good idea. Still better not to use too many
acronyms, but a reference list would certainly help. I want to learn a few new ones from time to time, after all; makes me feel like one of the cool kids (and I stopped being that decades ago IRL- in real life!).
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An acronym list would be forever changing
It could be like the Urban Dictionary. But acronyms have a life of their own, okay? And the acronymal definition can mutate. So fun and hip, baby. FIFO, HELOC, RO/RO, USDA, USFWS, BOLO, NSA (hi!).
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Fools Rush In
I'm glad you started this thread. I have asked for explanations of various acronyms from time to time. People have been most helpful in deciphering them for me or telling me about the acronym dictionary. Nevertheless, there is no need for an acronym unless space is limited such as it is on Twitter. Just write what you mean. There is no need for using a code.
I confess to being old and to not using Twitter or texting. Even so, I have always found acronyms to be a kind of bureaucratic laziness. I am guilty too because they are sometimes quite convenient. For example, NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is used frequently. Therefore, we have all agreed that NATO is more convenient. The point is that this acronym is used universally and irrespective of language, thus, has become a neologism even though it is actually an acronym. It is not an in-group code because so many nationalities use it in their native language. Most of the acronyms I see here are not in this league. I can live with LOL and its ilk, but acronyms made up on the spot are just laziness so far as I can see.
I also see the term "grammar nazi" used from time to time. Grammar exists for a reason: to clarify writing so it actually is communication and not illiterate gibberish. I don't find much misuse here. But I do find one kind of error that does not flatter the writer. English uses spelling to differentiate the meanings of homophones. I have seen writers use "sight" for "site" more than once. I haven't seen anyone use "sight" for "site" and "cite" in the same essay, but I have seen writers use "their" for "their," "there," and "they're" in the same essay.
As your English teacher probably told you, there is a difference between spoken and written language. Writing has rules that are there for clarity because one can't instantaneously correct statements as one can while speaking. It helps to remember why we have spelling conventions.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent.
-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
proofreaders
As a former editor and avid proofreader myself, a believer in the power of the pen/written word, a mistaken word choice or mangled sentence hurts me to read. However, I have come to grips with the idea that emailing and blog posting is quick and dirty; getting the sense expressed is the priority. It's almost like thinking aloud, working out ideas, a preliminary step rather than a finished product. Looked at that way, as long as it's comprehensible it's fine, typos don't matter.
Where I cringe is when a polished piece, ready for publication or actually published in a mainstream periodical, has a horrifying (to me, anyway) language error such as "they thought they could reign in the Tea Party". (You never see "the Queen has reined for 40 years" though, which tells you something.)
Language is important. Here in this context, though, I think of our communications as casual chatting for the most part, or like jotting something on scratch paper where it doesn't really matter, yet.
I'm new to using an iPad and after struggling with it for several months, I realized I cannot express myself with autocorrect fighting me all the way. It was liberating to disable that nasty feature. Now my mistakes are my own, and I can use words like 'iffy' without interference. I wonder what Tufte would say about autocorrect?? In terms of language and thought, he'd probably say it's iffy.
Polkageist, I agree in essence
Try typing a post on a phone or kindle and see how quickly you become fond of acronyms and abbreviations. Same goes for typos on a teeny screen and gorilla fingers. Auto correct has a hand in that, too. Grammar is plastic or we'd still be talking like Chaucer. I frequently shift from erudite and verbose to colloquial and concise, sometimes in the same sentence.
While it'd be nice to see perfect syntax (not the cost of smoking kind), I don't feel a forum such as this warrants the comma police (see TED talks).
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
Try typing a post on a phone or kindle
No need, and actually impossible for me. I don't own (or care to) either. If I'm away from home, I have better things to do than posting.
I don't think there's a suggestion here of anything more than making what you write understandable to (all of) those taking time to read it. In that, I do agree with Writerinres and Polkageist. I think what should be kept in mind is that while we have a lot in common, excessive use of acronyms does tend to isolate or divide us by our differing experiences, when we should instead be expanding our understanding of each other's experiences.
"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh
My internet sucks
Out here in a very rural area. I was one of the last people I know who finally got another option than dial up. 40 bucks a month tower based, cable not available. Now I know it would be ridiculous to keep the site designed around me, but that said I can't open the evening news diaries as the page repeatedly crashes and that's a shame as I feel I'm missing some great music.
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire
I feel your pain.
My internet service is via fiberoptic to copper wire to the house and DSL in the node. $120/month. At peak time (4-7PM) it's smokin' and download speed slows enough to not have streaming capability on Roku-connected TV. Nothing says third-world like a TV screen showing buffering (a First World whine). Son tells me that First World/Third World designations are aeronautical terms, I have not passed that one by Bisbonian.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.