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Wire Service
"Acronyms, Emoticons and NeologismsNo doubt everyone who reads this column has encountered -- and opened -- e-mail messages that turned out to be advertisements in disguise. Usually, that's because the sender managed to use keywords in the subject line that made you believe it was something you needed to read.Well now there's a name for this strategy: "Spamouflage."So says Paul McFedries, neologist and author of a book called Word Spy (Broadway Books 2004). For those who would rather do their reading online, though, he has a Web site (www.wordspy.com) at which he posts new words, many of which he's coined himself. Another example? "Blogosphere" -- which he defines as the "collection of all bloggers, blog sites, blog readers and blog text."Lest you think McFedries is hung up on technology terms, let me assure you his new words are all over the map. "Flexitarian," for instance, is "a person who eats mostly a vegetarian diet but who is also willing to eat meat or fish occasionally." All in all, the site offers great "cybertainment" (I came up with that one, or so I thought).Then, I remembered that McFedries emphasizes he's not the only person -- and often, not even the first -- to coin technology-related words. That theory can be proven rather easily: Make up a word of your own, then type it in the Google searchbox (www.google.com). Chances are, your bubble will burst in a hurry. Mine sure did -- Google turned up no less than 14,100 pages containing the word "cybertainment."Meanwhile, other folks are busy looking for ways to convey their thoughts without taking up much space -- or, in some instances, so that mom or dad or a suspicious spouse won't be able to understand their e-mail messages. This trend toward using acronyms in place of often-used phrases is likely to escalate, I suspect, as text messaging -- already a staple among teenagers worldwide -- goes mainstream as part of mobile technology like PDAs and cellular telephones.Most of us are familiar with shortcuts like FYI (for your information), ASAP (as soon as possible) and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). But how about GMTA or PMFJI? The first means Great Minds Think Alike; the second -- a must-know, I would think, for those who frequent chat rooms -- stands for Pardon Me For Jumping In.There's no shortage of Web sites at which you can learn these any many, many more; one of my favorites is a collection by Gunther Eichhorn at Harvard University (http://acro.harvard.edu/GEI/smileys.html). As the URL suggests, he's also compiled a long list of "emoticons," aka "smileys" -- those little characters made using letters on a keyboard that offers still another way to get your message across quickly.Here, too, most folks have seen the basic smiley face, made by typing a colon, a hyphen and a right parenthesis, like this: :-) Some of you have seen it wink (hint: use a semicolon in place of the colon).We all know not to type e-mail words and phrases in all capital letters -- it denotes shouting and is considered extremely impolite. But did you know you can convey shouting with a smiley? Just type a colon, a hyphen and a capital O, thus: :-O.Well, TAFN. SYNM (That's all for now. See you next month!) :-D"