Joseph's Jargon (2) from the February 2000 Actrix Newsletter

This month I thought I'd deal with a few terms to do with Chat as well as some of the common abbreviations and symbols.

Chat: A method of talking live with others over the internet by typing messages on your keyboard. You can actually carry on a conversation in "real time". This can be helpful when you are wanting help on a program or operating system question. It can be a fun way to meet and exchange ideas with people that you would never have met in person.

ICQ: Stands for "I Seek You." A program that can keep track of which of your friends are online and which allows you to chat, and send messages or files to them while surfing the net.

IRC: Internet Relay Chat. A text based chat system that has been around since the early days of the internet. It is still popular.

Shouting: TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING IN ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS. Avoid this unless you really mean to shout. If you really mean to shout, do it out loud; it feels much better.

BTW: Abbreviation for "By The Way."
AFK: Abbreviation for "Away From Keyboard."
AFAIK: Abbreviation for "As far as I know"
LOL: Abbreviation for "Laughing Out Loud"
ROTFL: Abbreviation for "Rolling on the Floor Laughing"
IMO: Abbreviation for "Im My Opinion"
IMHO: Abbreviation for "In my Humble Opinion."

Emoticon: A cute sideways face created by using special characters on the keyboard. Emoticons are used to express emotions without words. For example:

:-) this "smiley" indicates, "I'm joking, or I'm happy about what I'm writing.

;-) this winking face is a slightly cheekier version of the smiley.

:-( This sad face expresses grief or, "I'm sulking". If these make no sense, turn your head sideways and look again. :-)

     - Joseph