Email Abbreviations

Some abbreviations that are used a lot tell your status, like when you are leaving or when you will be back. Here are a few:

ADBB All Done Bye Bye
BBL Be Back Later
BBIAF Be Back in a Few
BBIAB Be Back in a Bit
BCNU Be Seein' You
BFN Bye For Now
BRB Be Right Back
CUL8R See You Later
L8R Later
LTNS Long Time No See
TAFN That's All For Now
TTFN Ta Ta For Now
TTYL Talk To You Later
WB Welcome Back

Other email abbreviations show positive feelings or offer the reader encouragement. Some of these are:

^5 High Five!
AAS Alive And Smiling
BEG Big Evil Grin
BG Big Grin
GMTA Great Minds Think Alike
HHO 1/2 K Ha Ha, Only Half Kidding
HTH Hope This(That) Helps
JK Just Kidding
LOL Laughing Out Loud
MHOTY My Hat's Off To You
MTFBWU May The Force Be With You
ROTFL Rolling On The Floor Laughing
RUOK Are you Okay?
T+ Think Positive
TIA Thanks In Advance
WEG Wicked Evil Grin
WTG Way To Go!

Wrapping up this section, here is a list of general email abbreviations that are commonly used:

2nite Tonight
411 Information
4ever Forever
ASAP As soon as possible
AWHFY Are We Having Fun Yet?
AYPI And Your Point Is?
B4 Before
DUR? Do You Remember?
J4F Just For Fun
KISS Keep it Simple, Stupid
NFC No Further Comment
NRN No Reply Necessary
NTM Not To Mention
OBTW Oh, By The Way
P&C Private and Confidential
P-ZA Pizza
QL Quit Laughing!
RTM Read The Manual
SITD Still In The Dark
WFM Works For Me
YYSSW Yeah Yeah Sure Sure Whatever
ZZZ Sleeping, Bored, Tired

Emoticons

When people communicate face to face, they rely on facial expressions to enhance the meaning of what the other person is saying. Also, when a person talks, the tone of voice can have a lot to do with the meaning of the words. Therefore, when you email someone, it is hard to get your meaning across with just words. Then came the birth of emoticons: combinations of keystrokes that make a picture that represents an emotion. The most common one is the smiley face “:)” with a colon and a parenthesis or you can add a dash “:-)”. Here are a few more:

O:-) angelic smile
8-) big-eyed smile
:-X big kiss
;-( crying face
:-> grinning
:-| indifference
:-)) laughing
:-( sad face
:-D shock or surprise
:-& tongue tied
:-[ vampire smiley
:-{} wearing lipstick
;-) winking
:-O yelling

Electronic Mail

With emails being such a huge part of our lives today, you might wonder when they started. It was not very long ago and in the beginning, both the sender’s and the receiver’s computer had to be on at the same time. We have certainly come a long way since then.

In the 1960s, emails often got lost and sometimes took days to get to the receiver. In the 1970s, addresses changed with the “@” symbol being used to improve the system. The format of “username@host” was adopted. Domains came in during the 1980s and the form was username@host.domain and later the form added one more subdivision “username@host.org.domain”.

Also in the 1980s, SMPT, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, was developed. This allowed an email that had more than one addressee to be sent to a domain. At that point, a server copied the message to each addressee. When AOL hooked up to the Internet in 1993, email was world wide. It is hard to believe that one simple thing can dramatically change our lives and have its own jargon and abbreviations to boot.

Email Abbreviations