Pet Peeve: Acronym Misuse

[Actual work status omitted. Bonus internet status provided instead]

Today's status message is written in HTML language for the WWW web.

Explanation: It just drives me batty when people misuse acronyms. This happens all the time at work, but I don't want to post anything internal on the internet, so I'll just complain about "ATM machines" instead. An acronym should be able to be expanded into a string of words and still make sense in the context in which it was used. For example, "I got money out of the ATM machine" would expand to "I got money out of the automated teller machine machine." People do this all the time. You don't say "I'm from the USA America." You don't say "I'm making a PB&J jelly sandwich." Why would you say "ATM machine?" Jeez. Think before you speak, people!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go check out this TV vision show on the CNN network about how a Navy SEAL land went MIA action in the USSR republics because his SCUBA apparatus malfunctioned during a SAR rescue mission.

Pet Peeve: ICTL

My Pet Peeve:

ppl who use ictl

Explanation: It's official. I'm giving it a name. I officially proclaim it to be ICTL: "I Can't Type Language." As a frequent user of instant-messaging tools, I have grown to despise this. I know, ICTL is quite popular with text message senders, and I don't condone their use of it, but at least they have the excuse of dealing with a horrific text entry interface. Instant messagers have no such excuse. Their only excuse is that they can't type on a standard keyboard.

I just love having exchanges like this online:

Jeremy: Hey do you have a minute?
Coworker: brb
...
Coworker: ok
Jeremy: We're going to have to report our status on this project at the meeting this afternoon. Do you think you can put together your half of it, and then we'll just each present separately?
Coworker: sure
Jeremy: Cool. Thanks!
Coworker: np
Jeremy: See you at 1:00.
Coworker: ok

I typed about 210 characters. My coworker typed 13. I typed 10 punctuation marks. My coworker typed 0. I typed 6 capitalized letters. My coworker typed zero.

This is even worse when I get outside of my industry. Every time I'm playing poker online and somebody types "nh" for "Nice hand" or "gg" for "Good game," I just want to strangle them. TYPE IT OUT, PEOPLE! Jeez. It's not that hard.

Pet Peeve: Pronounstitution

My Pet Peeve:

People who misfuse words.

Explanation: Yesterday, in an online chat, somebody made a snide remark about Ricky Williams' torn pectorial. Now, as far as I know, a pectorial should be a collection of photographs of men's chests. Why Ricky Williams has one, I have no idea, but the man smokes up a lot and did wear a wedding dress that one time, so I guess anything is possible.

As I thought about this, I realized that I have seen this phenomenon several times. Usually, it happens when somebody is reaching just outside of their vocabulary for a word. They don't quite get the word right, but they do manage to combine the word with another one, also slightly outside of their vocabulary. After a little stroll through my therannysaurus*, I have decided to call this phenomenon the misfuse of words. (This choice slightly edged out pronounstitution)

I can think of a few other examples of word misfuse. I was once told by somebody that a person had broken their tibula. I said "Wow, that's too bad," feeling for the poor guy - not only are his two lower leg bones fused together, but he managed to break them too! That just sucks.

Then, of course, there was Mike Tyson (Mike, if you're reading this, we at Jeremy's Status Message has nothing but the utmost respect for you) who once said, "I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian." I don't know much about South America, but I'm pretty sure he didn't plan on going there to be forgotten.

If you come up with any other examples of word misfuse, please feel free to post them as comments.

*I use a very big, very old thesaurus... with useless forelimbs.