Do not be corrupted by the jargon of social networks
What is social media jargon? Slang is informal words and language that are not associated with the standard/common language that we use in society.
Social media slang is mainly taken from communication on social media. When you communicate within social networks like Facebook and Twitter, you are often presented with a small amount of space to convey information to convey to the other user involved.
Shortcuts, abbreviations and L337 Speak are often invented for quick and short lines of communication.
Slang of the first social networks
Before Twitter and Facebook wall posts and status updates, there was AOL and instant messaging chat rooms.
AOL is known for being the grandfather of the creation of Internet jargon and was the beginning of the early pioneers of short and fast communication shortcuts. L33t Speak and acronyms were used a lot in the AOL days.
L337 Talk made AOL users type words like:
// 0 n3 Y = Money
MyCrOsoFt=Microsoft
4 replaces A, 3 replaces E, 7 replaces T 1 replaces L and $ replaces S, 13 replaces B are just a few more examples. L337 talk is still widely used in video games.
Acronyms or the “Text Talk” it is still very popular too. Some examples are below
U = You 2 = Too much TTYL = I’ll talk to you later LOL = Laughing out loud 4 = Stop R = Son O = OH
The corruption of the English language
With chat rooms and instant messaging decreasing traffic loss and more and more users texting and using social media to communicate, Internet Slang has now morphed into Social Media Slang.
These are English Teacher’s worst nightmares. These jargon shortcuts can corrupt your business and education.
Just because it’s easy to just “talk slang” or “talk on text,” try to practice good communication and not fall victim to social media slang. You don’t want to write a proposal for a client that has this below:
“Hi, what do you want to do today? Please let me know, k, ttyl”
This, of course, is highly unprofessional and can be detrimental to your etiquette. Although this seems like common sense, more and more professionals are getting caught with “Social Media Slang”
As with your personal profiles, keep your online etiquette very professional as well and don’t fall prey to the corruption of shortcuts and jargon.