Sunday, November 15, 2009

Giving Up. Or, My Headlines Will Be Singular Again. EOM.

Yeah, I'm not really going to write about what's in my title. Let's just say the dual headlines are ending. They're too haaaaaaaard.

*****

I learned a great acronym the other day: EOM. I'd never seen this one before. In business email, I've seen COB, B2B, JIT, PoP, SIC, SWOT, VO, Yuppie, and Buppie, not to mention the alphabet soup that comes with working in Washington, D.C., or for an international organization.

And then there's all of the text messaging/SMS'ing shorthand: Whts YR 411?, RU there?, Mt @ mrkt tmrrw am?, and so on. Half the time, it takes me longer to figure out what the hell the person is trying to tell me in textspeak than it would have if they had just been less lazy and actually written it all out, thereby saving us all a lot of grief and headscratching. Pictograms, Pictionary, and personalized license plates are easier! But don't even get me started. Suffice to say, I'm one of the few people I know who uses capital letters, grammar, and full punctuation in my email and text messaging.

Anyway--back to EOM. As I said, I had never seen this one before. Ironically, it appeared in an email from my colleague whose purpose it is in life to eliminate the use of acronyms. When I saw it in the subject line of said email from her, I had to ask, "What is EOM?"

It's an acronym that you put at the end of an email subject line that stands for "End of Message." It means you're not going to write any text in the body of the email and the subject line is your message, full stop.

I did not know this.

Did you know this?

What are your favorite and least favorite acronyms? (And be sure to provide their meanings or I might have to show my stupidity and ask.)

Photo source: Simon Fraser University, School of Applied Sciences

5 comments:

Maya said...

I did know this one (though I remember the first time I saw it, it took me awhile to figure it out). I think all acronyms need to die a long and torturous death!

lacochran said...

TLA is my favorite acronym. It stands for Three Letter Acronym.

Madame Meow said...

LOL @ TLA. I had seen EOM before, but I'd never figured it out. My favorite is RBOC (random bullets of crap).

Go figure.

Gilahi said...

I once heard a coworker describe another coworker as a CRI. When I asked, I was informed that it means "Cranio-Rectal Invert".

J.M. Tewkesbury said...

Maya: I agree. Although LOL is a good one!


LA: I love the irony of TLA.


Madame: Excellent! I've never seen RBOC before, that's fabulous!


Gilahi: CRI = Head up one's @$$? Lovely!