Internet language and blogspeak

More on acronyms on the Internet and in the blogosphere. Here are some of my favourites:

GOL Giggling out loud

HTH Hope this helps

IMHO In my humble opinion

IMO In my opinion

TTFN Ta ta for now

BION Believe it or not

ROFL Rolling on the floor laughing

FWIW For what it's worth

AFAIK As far as I know

L8er Later

Snark This is a blog, posting or blogger who is nasty and obnoxious

Macrologue A conversation going on between lots of people, on a global scale, on many blogs all at the same time

Megablog This blogging word is used to describe a really big, very busy blog

Well, there's a lot more to blogspeak, the language of blogging than briefly mentioned here. The easiest way to find out more about blogspeak is to search the Internet in search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN.

You can look for a single acronym that you are not sure of. Alternatively, you could search in a blogging dictionary to find lists of terms.

Some good blogging dictionaries are:

• David Gagne: www.davidgagne.net/index.php?p=3958
• The Giant Blogging Terms Glossary: www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/06/the-giant-blogging-terms-glossary
• Blog Terms Glossary: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,sid9_gci1186975,00.html

There is nothing worse than trying to show off but using an acronym wrongly. It's best to check out and make sure of the meaning first before using.

Interesting Blogging Terms and Acronyms

Having been in the blogosphere for some time, I find that every now and then I come across an unfamiliar blogging term. However, for me, certain terms have been demystified like LOL for Laughing Out Loud, FYI for For Your Information, and Moblog for a blog posted and maintained via mobile phone.

BTW, I have a blog like that (moblog) at http://mobiledale.blogspot.com which I post and maintain with my Sony Ericsson K530i mobile phone. It has a 2 mega-pixel camera which enables me to do photoblogging that goes with appropriate captions.

Certain other terms which may be unfamiliar with many people are vlogging, also called video blogging, shortened to vlog, and audioblogging which is making blogs from MP3 music or speech, shortened to audioblog.

Blog components and functions also entail new words like header, the topmost part of the blog usually listing the blog title, and footer, the bottom-most part of the blog usually listing copyright statements and sometimes navigation.

Also something new is Captcha - short for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Those word and numbers verification images you need to type in to show you are human and not a bot. Helpful to block automated spam comments.

Another unfamiliar term is Permalink - a link to a specific article in a blog. And, Tags are labelling or attaching keywords to collect similar posts.

Blogroll is a list of links to other blogs in your sidebar.

Template is the blog presentation design.

Plugins are small files that add improved functionality and new features to your blog.

Dashboard - when you login to your blogging account, it is the first screen with all controls, tools and functions.

A rather interesting term is Blogstipation - writer's block for bloggers! Can't think of what to blog about? Then this term applies.

But when you have an unusually high output of articles, it is called Blogorrhea.

Ha, ha! Interesting, isn't it?