Why is that, you might ask? Well, lexicographers encounter these abbreviations in the same way everyone else does-that is, in informal written communication, and not, as a rule, in the usual environs of good dictionary candidates (i.e., published, edited text like newspapers, magazines, and books). Afaik ("as far as I know"), most of the other abbreviations mentioned so far date at least to the early days of Usenet, which began in the 1980s.Īnd yet, most of these abbreviations have yet to be entered into our dictionaries. But it is certainly true that computers (including the ones that are the phones in our pockets) have led to the creation and dissemination of scads of new ones. We have evidence of OMG ("oh my God") dating to 1917, and FYI ("for your information") dates to at least as early as the 1940s. (Note: If we wanted to express either an amount of diffidence or a flat-out rejection of diffidence, we'd use imho or imnsho: "in my humble opinion" or "in my not so humble opinion," respectively.)ītw (that's "by the way"), abbreviations like these are not a new phenomenon. Not at all desirable, imo ("in my opinion"). If the wielder of the opaque abbreviations doesn't know (or doesn't care) about the reader's uninitiated status, the reader has to either guess at the meaning or wander away to discover it.
The problem, of course, is when one's reader is among those unfortunate uninitiated. Though 'tbh' ("to be honest") is well established in informal communication, it appears less frequently in published, edited text.
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