Why Are Your Fav Abbrevs Totes Legit Hard to Spell?

allthingslinguistic:

I’m on Mental Floss talking about the legit linguistics of abbrevs: 

Perhaps the best part of abbrevs is how they intersect with other slang, like acronyms. Most of the time, you just add an s or a z to the end of the acronym without actually abbreving it at all, as in lols and omgz, but acronyms with w are special. The best known are BTdubs (from “by the way” via BTW), dubsTF (from WTF), and FTdubs (from “for the win” via FTW), but I also found people on Twitter using OMdubs (“on my way” via OMW), BMdubs (BMW, as in the car), and even one guy who uses FWIdubs (“for what it’s worth”).

The “dubs” abbrevs really put the lie to the idea that people abbrev just because it’s easier, since all the w acronyms are actually shorter than their “dubs” versions.

[Read the rest.]

Why Are Your Fav Abbrevs Totes Legit Hard to Spell?