LOL is an abbreviation that falls under the category of "Chat Lingo". It
can have more than one meaning, such as: Laugh Out Loud or Lots Of Laughs
or Lots Of Love. Many such abbreviations are used in chat rooms, Instant
Message chats (know as IM's), and even in e-mail and postings to news groups
or online discussion groups. The abbreviations are a form of short hand
used to express emotion, opinion or response with out having to type out the
full words. Since typed messages frequently do not convey the tone,
inflection or intent that our thoughts would have in a spoken conversation,
the abbreviations are used to help add a little more spice to our typed
thoughts, or add frequently used phrases without all the typing.
Some other examples are:
BRB - Be Right Back
IHMO - In My Humble Opinion,
TTFN - Ta Ta For Now
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
BTDT - Been There Done That
BG - Big Grin
BEG - Big Evil Grin
BWK - Big Wet Kiss
S or *S* or <S> - Smile
G or *G* or <G> - Grin
BCNU - Be Seein' You
CU L8R - See You Later
BTW - By The Way
and one of my personal favorites - ROTFLMAO - Rolling On The Floor Laughing
My A** Off.
Well, the list goes on and on, but I'm sure you are starting to get the idea
now.
You may also see what are called Smileys or Emoticons, which are small
pictures made from keyboard symbols and are usually viewed by leaning your
head sideways to the left.
:-) is a basic smiley,
:-( is a frown,
;-) is a wink,
$ :-( is a bad hair day,
^i^ and ~A~ are angels,
:o )) is pleased
(AT)--->--->---- is a rose
etc, etc.
Some of the special symbols used in making Smileys are made with ASCII
characters (000 - 128) or extended ASCII characters (129 - 255). ASCII
stands for American Standard For Information Interchange). They can be
printed to your screen by holding down the Alt key while keying in numbers
from 033 to 255. The numbers 032 and under are for carriage return, line
feed, and other non printing keyboard functions. Also, some of the numbers
between 032 and 255 may not print a character to your screen. You'll just
have to experiment to find out which ones work on your computer. All the
letters, numbers, symbols and other keys like shift, Ctl, Alt, backspace,
etc., on your keyboard have an ASCII number.
For example the following characters are made by holding down the Alt key,
keying in the three numbers and then releasing the Alt key.
¼ is Alt172
« is Alt174
» is Alt175
¿ is Alt168
( is Alt040
) is Alt041
* is Alt042
+ is Alt043
- is Alt045
µ is Alt 230
÷ is Alt246
° is Alt248
² is Alt253
Give it a try!
The Web Broadcasting System (WBS) has a long list of Chat Lingo
abbreviations and Smileys at this web page on their site. The page is
titled "The Chat Book". I think you will enjoy it.
http://wbs.net/wbs3/flypaper/wbs/chat_book.html
The list in "The Chat Book" is by no means complete or absolute. There is
always room for interpretation, variations and imagination.
Let me know if you have any trouble finding the site, or if you don't have a
web browser I can copy the list and e-mail it to you.
Waving goodbye ~~~~~~~~~~~~bye!
Warm Regards :-)
Leo
leo_4084(AT)msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: BAKERJU(AT)wpmail.onc.jhu.edu <BAKERJU(AT)wpmail.onc.jhu.edu>
To: tmic-list(AT)eskimo.com <tmic-list(AT)eskimo.com>
Date: Thursday, October 16, 1997 8:50 AM
Subject: LOL
>** Reply Requested When Convenient **
>In a lot of the e-mail messages I have noticed the letters LOL at the end
>of the message. What does LOL stand for? Thank you
>
>Judy
>
>