
- Image by luc legay via Flickr
This past January, I wrote up the “Top 15 Twitter acronyms” for @pistachio’s Touchbase blog. As readers rightly pointed out, many were abbreviations or initialisms — hence the title for this post. I followed that up with a “Top 10 NSFW Twitter Abbreviations.” This list combines the two and includes some key additions, like HT, RE and FML. If you have others you think I missed, add ‘em in the comments.
@
Reply to [username]
AFAIK
b/c
BFN
BR
BTW
Direct Message. d username sends one.
EM
FB
FFS
FML
FTF
Face To Face. Also, F2F. Or the Fair Trade Federation. Many other options.
FTL
FTW
FWD
FWIW
HT
HTH
IMHO
IMO
IRL
JV
J/K
LI
LMAO
LMK
LOL
NSFW
OH
OMFG
OMG
PRT
Partial Retweet (at the start of a tweet). Sometimes “Please Retweet” Old School: Party
RE
In reply to. As in, use RE for @replies on Twitter. Used in front of the @ to ensure all followers can see the conversation. Further ontext: “Community, @replies, #fixreplies and Change“
RR
RT
RTF
Read The FAQ. RTFF shows up too. RTF also stands for Rich Text File.
RTFM
RTQ
Read The Question or Retweet Question
RTHX
SNAFU
SOB
STFU
STFW
TMB
TMI
via
My one cheat: “via” is not an abbreviation or acronym. It simply means that a tweet is from @username, though in some cases it may mean that it’s also an exact retweet. Tricky, this online user-defined lingo and twitribution is.
WTF
WTH
YMMV
YW
BONUS:
NB (Nota Bene) – make sure to read the comments, where there are many great additions.
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12 Comments
June 11, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Well this is an interesting post. OMG, AFAIK FWIW I generally try and use ummmm words b/c I can & IMHO IRL, most people do like the fuller word versions. This post did make me LMAO tho.
BFN,
BR,
Katie
Oh & BTW, HTH.
June 12, 2009 at 2:09 pm
You forgot a word in the explanation of RTFM…
(As you might guess, I can’t say the word… But, under precedent established above, you’d write F–king in its place, no?)
June 12, 2009 at 10:13 pm
IIRC ~~If I remember correctly.
I see that used fairly often.
June 24, 2009 at 8:29 am
TY (thank you)
June 24, 2009 at 9:08 am
[...] Top 50 Twitter Acronyms, Abbreviations and Initialisms « digiphile – A big list of well used acronyms used on Twitter [...]
July 12, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] Top 50 Twitter Acronyms, Abbreviations and Initialisms http://digiphile.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/top-50-twitter-acronyms-abbreviations-and-initialisms/ [...]
July 21, 2009 at 1:50 pm
OMW – Oh, My word
July 26, 2009 at 3:01 am
Another one that nobody has added is the use of the number 4 to mean “for”.
August 4, 2009 at 10:42 am
[...] Abbreviations to tweet. [...]
August 4, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for the information..nice collection
August 27, 2009 at 11:33 pm
TQ: as Thank you
TQVM : Thank you very much
TQRT : RT thanks
CZ: cause
BCZ: because
great list by the way
December 19, 2009 at 5:10 am
Very insightful and useful too