Quote Originally Posted by miners_girl View Post
The worst thing about this whole argument, is that everyone is getting tied up with acronyms- to explain or not to explain- and moved away from the original question of the thread- which was an interesting one.
Everyone? No, we all said what we needed to say yesterday and had moved on. It's you and miner who can't seem give it up.

Quote Originally Posted by Miner
Just because something has common parliance somewhere doesn't mean it's universal. There are exceptions which are very well known (BDSM in the English speaking world, for example - and anyone who found this site should know what BDSM means before they got here), but can we expect the same is true for all terms?
Yes, I do expect someone to know the common acronyms and if they don't know the meanings then look it up. Don't get upset because you have to do a little research on your own for Gods sake.

Quote Originally Posted by Miner
It's not going to break anyone's back to take a page out of the book used by AP (American Press Services) or Reuters and spell out the acronym the first time it's used in a thread. It's just politesse.
If this were an AP service and we were here putting stories out on the wire, you bet we would follow the writing guidelines put forth by the agency we were working for.

Guess what, this isn't a wire service.

This is a chat board and if you expect the writing here to follow any sort of guideline to fit into some pre-conceived definition of what is proper format then you are going to be severely disappointed.

Now, back to the topic.

There was that one time, at band camp...