A wee article in last week's Illawarra Mercury (January 6) caught my eye.
It was about fat people being evicted from a dating website dedicated to beautiful people.
But it wasn't the article per se that grabbed my attention; it was the comic beside it depicting a rather rotund lady with a word bubble and the sentence: "Hopefully I can LMAO and get my membership back."
Her companion dog was apparently thinking: "LOL".
This was all double Dutch to me.
My Mercury colleagues looked at me pittingly before gently explaining LMAO means laugh my arse off and LOL is laugh out loud, although they tell me it can also mean lots of love.
I know textese has been around for a long time, but I rarely use it - C U L8R is about as good as it gets.
I find it disturbing when there is a word that everyone else knows but has me absolutely flummoxed.
It's a modern-day shorthand that has nothing to do with the Pitman script I learnt 30 years ago, a subtext that has completely passed me by.
But a little investigation brought me up to speed, mainly due to a website dedicated to online chat acronyms and text messages.
Some are straight forward, such as 4COL (for crying out loud), OMG (oh my God) or OMGYG2BK (oh my God, you've got to be kidding), ?4U (I have a question for you) and AWOL (missing in action).
But others are a bit more obscure.
How do you get a shoulder shrug from MEH, I love you from 143 and what on earth does boy, I feel like a turquoise monkey (BISFLATM) mean?
Some are fun: <3 stands for love or heart; </3 is a broken heart, 831 is I love you (eight letters, three words, one meaning), MWAH is a kiss (as in the sound you make when you kiss the air), URA* is you are a star, <><>R4FR is diamonds are forever and XYZ is examine your zipper.
And every parent should be across the following: POS (parent over shoulder), 9 (parent is watching) and AITR (adult in the room).
KPC is keeping parents clueless, UDS is ugly domestic scene, LHSX is let's have sex and ASL is age/sex/location.
The names texters use to describe each other doesn't pull any punches either.
If you're a SNERT you're a snot-nosed egotistical teenager, while an IWIAM is an idiot wrapped in a moron.
One website I stumbled on suggested that giving the classics an SMS makeover might be a way of engaging the young.
Thus Shakespeare's Hamlet might say: 2b/-2b=?; Juliet might lament: rm rm w4Ru rm? And Richard III might declare: ggggUK4gg (A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!)
Why stop there?
The satirical Christian online magazine Ship of Fools challenged its subscribers to rewrite the Lord's Prayer in 160 characters or fewer.
The competition was won by Matthew Campbell of York University: "dad@hvn, ur spshl. we want wot u want &urth2b like hvn. giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz. don't test us! save us! bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?"
One character I know who would really enjoy texting is Winnie the Pooh.
After all, he didn't like long words and AA Milne might have written: "4 Im a br f v ltl brn & lng wds bthr me".
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