We live in truncated times. It seems no one has the time to say entire phrases anymore. They’ve all been whittled down to letters — two letters, three letters, four or more. Perhaps it is because our days are so full of activity and our society is now so dependent on expediency that people were forced to develop this whole new language. Acronyms have taken over. Shorthand has gone verbal.

There have always been the tried and true acronyms. ASAP, ETA, POW. It must have been the proliferation of chat rooms and the sudden surge in text messaging that caused the acronym to find its way into mainstream lingo. Suddenly ASAP and ETA were the acronyms of the greybeards. Only squares used those antiquated, clipped quips. LOL and BTW and BRB were all the rage. Then, before I knew it, the deluge came.

I dare you to walk into any place of business these days, approach someone and attempt a conversation that isn’t rife with acronyms. It’s virtually impossible. Ask one business related question and you’ll be pummeled with ROIs (Return On Investment) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and COGS (Cost of Goods Sold). And these are the well-known acronyms! There are thousands more, business related and otherwise. So many, in fact, that they’ve even been compiled into a dictionary made especially for abbreviations and acronyms.

Sometimes I think people throw acronyms around just to feel superior. So, instead of saying, “That was so f’ing funny!”, they would say something like, “That was SFF!”. At that point, the onus is on me. Do I laugh and nod in agreement even though I have no idea what they are talking about? Or do I show my lack of acronym aptitude by admitting that I don’t know what the hell they just said? I am usually confronted by this issue on a daily basis. It bugs me because I am not sure if I should feel stupid or if I should slap the person talking to me for (in my mind) trying to make me feel stupid. I think the best approach is to feel stupid but slap the person and not tell them why just so they can feel as bad about the whole thing as I do.

Pretty soon, we won’t even use whole words anymore. Contractions and acronyms will be the only way to communicate. All “real talkers” would be considered dawdling sloths who would be avoided in social situations simply because it took them twenty seconds to say what could be said in ten. In fact, “real talkers” would probably be looked down upon the way most southerners (and I am a southerner, so I feel qualified in stating this) are looked down upon by many Yankees.

All I want to say is the English language is a beautiful language, even in all it’s wordiness. Can we not diminish it by carving it down to three and four letter catch phrases and “faux” alliterative mumbo jumbo? I can only imagine that if Hemingway were to somehow be resurrected and he got a hint of what the English language has become, he would find a gun and shoot himself all over again.