Often used abbrevations and acronyms

[smallfreak]

Since I'm pretty new with this stuff and the communinty here, I have a hard time to understand some messages.


There are some abbrevations that are used quite often and some of them I already have deciphered.

I do know general forum shortcuts but this forum uses a lot of topic specific acronyms that may be obvious to veterans but are not that clear to new guests.

But there already may be a "list of often used tems" that could provide some help to me - and that escaped my attention till now. Certainly it's not a good idea to ask them one by one by occasion. :thinking:

Is there? Or would this be cheating and it's part of the game to prove I can climb that mountain on my own?

Thanks,
Robert

 

[BowtieGuy]

Yes, there have been a few threads over the years on this topic, some of them more complete than others.

Here is a couple of older threads that I found in a quick search.

https://laserpointerforums.com/f44/acronyms-forum-42167.html

https://laserpointerforums.com/f44/good-know-laser-term-guide-newbies-58951.html

 

[smallfreak]

Thanks for kicking me into the right direction. I tried the search on a couple of possible keywords with "no result". It helps when you know what you are looking for. Probably the search engine filters a couple of often used "fill words" from the search. Bad for looking up a "fillword".

 

[BowtieGuy]

No problem, hopefully some of those will help until you become familiar with the terminology.
I just searched "Laser acronym" in the "custom search bar located at the bottom of the page, there is a wealth of laser related information located there! :yh:

 

[smallfreak]

https://laserpointerforums.com/f44/acronyms-forum-42167.html

and this one even is a sticky. :banghead:

 

[steve001]

and this one even is a sticky. :banghead:

Even so, I will spell out the word then in parentheses put the acronym or abbreviation for newbies. After I do that in a reply I will shorthand rather than spelling out. For example, the word Rayleigh Range which is a long term I'll abbreviate (RR).

 

[smallfreak]

This is indeed very helpful.



When I try to cross read some older topics where the veterans chat freely, I now have a cheat sheet handy. I'm quite good in catching up on technical topics.

 

[lasersbee]

I know what you mean....
This is the way we will communicate in the future...

I H U A.
T I A L M W T C.




Translated.....
I hate abbreviations.
That is a lazy man's way of communicating..:Beer:

Jerry

 

[hakzaw1]

Good luck w/that 'Jer'
Once I search one- I either Know it or start using it... predictions made some time ago were that we ALL would be using LOTS of 'Text talk' or ' Textwords'
I will say sometimes , try as I will, I cannot just figure some out.
And I would say we can forget punctuation... Caps when we were taught to use them... spaces.. olde school was double space after period .. to begin another sentence.. and one of my pet peeves is "Brick Texting" -lack of spacing between what should be 'paragraphs'

To be fair a balance between the 'Rules of the way most were taught and 'textspeak' is in order.

My bad if I type just like I was taking to someone..unlikely that will change.

The search at the bottom never fails IF you use best search terms..

Like 'what is 'IDKFS' mean?'
First time I read that I was... hmm I don't know.(what that means). for sure anyway..but IDK is an old one --so anyone can figure out the 'FS'.

all kinds of short cuts to all kinds of things has been around forever..
like VR or V/R... rsvp... et al (< anyone not know 'And Others'--etal et al.... etc< oops another one.
who does NOT know what ps/PS is ???duh

If you do not know what some shortcuts mean--do a search-- Prolly takes the same amt. of time as writing a post or thread to find out.. we are lucky having English as our first language-- these shortcuts must be VERY hard for those with English as second language OR those just learning..

I use PITA a lot here--some members are REAL PITAS... I see accu could not keep from double posting in 'HIS' personal thread.. lol Def. of PITA?
--what some members are--

 

[lasersbee]

I use Google if I don't know an abbreviation...

Jerry

 

[smallfreak]

A couple of abbrevations are commonly used in different boards. These are the ones one will pick up quite quickly, even if you are not a native speaker. Depending on the topic of the forum, quite a lot are highly specific to a certain community where the general knowledge of discussion culture does not help much.


"RR" as mentioned by @steve001 is a good example. One would not immediately associate the term "Rayleigh Range" with it, if you are not settled firmly in this topic. Google is of no help here and the board search states


It is not listed in the great "Acronyms for the forum" either, so for a noob it could pose quite a hurdle when trying to understand the geek speech of people having an interesting discussion.

It's OK to NOT give an easy explanation for everything. You learn most, if you have to try to inhale the spirit of the topic on your own, doing cross research on this and that. Those people later cause the least trouble.

I remember having a simple but effective "DAU filter" in front of my FIDO Net mailbox server (is anyone here old enough to remember these times?). It stated "press ctrl-alt-del to login". This was on a usual MS-DOS PC, well before Microsoft pirated this gag for the real login. So if you are "generation Internet" - this key combination immediately did a reboot on the client machine. Users not aware of this joke would have had troubles operating the mailbox anyway.

I wonder whether I could have sued Microsoft for stealing this idea ... :thinking:

 

[H2Oxide]

Queries using the forum's native search feature require keywords to be at least 4 letters long. Don't ask me why, I don't know.

I would recommend against using the built in search, and instead attach "site:laserpointerforums.com" to a Google search. This will restrict results to the forum. :beer: