Friday Protip: Know When To Say When With Acronyms

by Sanya Weathers

Using acronyms has an advantage besides speed (and easy updating from your smart phone). Anyone who reads your material and understands it automatically feels like an insider, someone special “in the know.”

It’s true of humanity in general, not just customers. What tech support person doesn’t feel just a tiny rebellious thrill by solving a customer’s problem and notating the account with “Problem was BCAK”?

All the tech support people reading this just laughed. A small proportion went straight to Google. Everyone else just felt impatient and/or irritated.

With an internet community, you will always have new people coming to your site (and your twitter feed, and your Facebook page, and whatever else). Those people may be just new to your product, but they may be new to the internet in general. If you’re updating a medium that allows you to hotlink to Urban Dictionary or your own internal glossary, feel free to go crazy with the acronyms, because the advantage is too good to lose. But if you can’t provide a hotlink, skip it. Never voluntarily associate your product with impatient irritation.

And it’s “between chair and keyboard,” by the way.