KISS This!!

Now that I have your attention just remember, WYSIWYG!

We live in a world of abbreviations, acronyms and shortcuts. Everybody can relate to shortcuts and perhaps the younger generations use them most of all. Where would we be while “texting” or “talking” in a chat room without abbreviations for common words and phases?

Most people know that KISS means, “Keep It Simple Stupid”. I’m all for practicing KISS. Anybody who has spent hours at a keyboard “talking” to a computer knows the value of minimizing keystrokes.

WYSIWYG is “What You See Is What You Get”. It is very familiar phrase for anyone working on documents, web pages, or presentation programs.

Once drug companies were allowed to advertise on TV a whole new world of acronyms appeared. You can’t just be short of breath; you have to have COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). Also, I thought all us guys when we got old had to go the bathroom more often. Oh, no! Now we’re told we have BPH or Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia and don’t forget to tell your doctor so he or she can prescribe some of Merck’s PROSCAR, what ever that stands. But I digress.

What is your favorite abbreviation or acronym? Here are just a handful of my favs. Add your own in the comment section. Check your answers below.

QANTAS

ATT

YUPPIE

DINK

BUPPIE

WASP

GUI

SNAFU

PDQ

AM & FM & XM

BMW

MG

BSA

MYOB




QANTAS is that airline that flies out of Australia. It stands for Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services.

Everyone must know ATT, the company that is now known mostly as a cell phone outfit. How many youngsters out there know that it used to be AT&T and stood for American Telephone and Telegraph Company?

A YUPPIE is a “Young Upwardly Mobile Professional Person”. It’s kind of like being a DINK or “Double Income No Kids”.

If you know a YUPPIE you might just know a BUPPIE, which is a “Black Urban Professional Person”.

Most of the people I grew up with were WASPS, or “White Anglo-Saxon Persons”.

Playing on a computer wouldn’t be much fun if someone hadn’t invented the GUI. “Graphic User Interface”. An icon on your computer desktop is a GUI.

In the military we used SNAFU all the time. The cleaned up version is “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up”.

I’m guessing everybody knows the PDQ is “Pretty Darn Quick”.

I cheated on XM since it is not an acronym, but the commonly used name for XM Satellite Radio that recently merged with Sirius Satellite Radio. FM is “Frequency Modulation” and AM is “Amplitude Modulation”, both representing the type of technique used to transmit radio signals.

Now lets play the automotive game. BMW – no it is not b-tch, moan and whine; it stands for Bavarian Motor Works or, to more correct, Bayerische Motoren Werke.

MG. Those were cute little British sports cars. The meaning? Morris Garage.

BSA was a common motorcycle manufacturer. If you owned a BSA it was made by Birmingham Small Arms.

If you got this far perhaps you’ve figured out that I’m OCD and are telling me to “Mind Your Own Business”. So for now, “GB”, “GL”, “L8R”, and I hope this left you “ROFL”.