Speeding Communications with Abbreviations

Most folks talk faster than they can type, so text chat in one-to-one IM, Group IM Chat, and at meetings can seem slow by comparison. One good way of speeding text chat up is by using abbreviations and acronyms – short hand ways to say something that would otherwise take significantly longer to type in, which can improve speed and accuracy. Such use is socially determined by the setting in which it occurs, and this usage can be off-putting to people who are new to that setting. So to help bring these benefits to communication between comrades and at our Party meetings, I've assembled a quick list of the commonly used abbreviations and acronyms we're most likely to use, drawn from the chat transcripts of our first two OGGMs – hope you find it useful.

AFAIK    As Far As I Know
AFAIR    As Far As I Recall
AFK      Away From Keyboard
AR       Abuse Report, or the SL Abuse Reporting and
         arbitrary 'justice' system
ATM      At The Moment
BRB      Be Right Back
BTW      By The Way
CPSL     Communist Party of Second Life
CPSL HQ  Communist Party of Second Life Headquarters:
         http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vigdorova/37/204/74
FYI      For Yor Information
GN       Group Notice
HUD      Head Up Device – in Second Life usage, usually a gadget
         that you attach to one of your Viewer's eight HUD points
IM       Instant Message, the chat channels used to talk to
         individuals and Groups
IMHO     In My Humble Opinion
IMO      In My Opinion
IRL      In Real Life
ISL      In Second Life
LOL      Laugh Out Loud
OGMM     Open General Membership Meeting – in CPSL usage; currently
         every Sunday at 11:00am PST (=19:00 GMT) at CPSL HQ
RL       Real Life
SL       Second Life
SLURL    Second Life Uniform Resource Locator, providing direct
         teleport links to locations in Second Life
         More info: http://slurl.com
TY       Thank You
WB       Welcome Back

Note: although the left hand column shows CAPITALS, in chat the lower case is sometimes used to further speed up text chat.

In Membership Meetings
Comrade's initials, eg AA = Alys Abruzzo, are much quicker and easier to type than typing their first name in full.

Time References

GMT      Greenwich Mean Time
PDT      Pacific Daylight Time
PST      Pacific Standard Time (Note that during summer daylight saving
         time/summer time is observed, and PDT is used instead)
SLT      Second Life Time, ie: PST in winter, PDT in summer (in the
         Northern hemisphere, & vise versa in the Southern hemisphere)

http://www.timeanddate.com
...is he best website I've found for keeping track of world time, from taking account of daylight saving times, via setting up a 'Personal World Clock', to finding out when a future event will occur in your time-zone with the 'Fixed Time World Clock', and many other time related tasks.

Please add a comment below with your suggestion(s) for additions, and I'll add them to the list above.

In Solidarity,

Dalinian Bing