Speaking in abbreviations

[BT Jones]

This one's a simple one. I have a character that speaks a lot in abbreviations (WTF, LOL, NFW, etc.) The only question I have is, should I write them just like that, or should I write them phonetically, in terms of how they are actually pronouncing the letters, i.e.: dubya-tee-eff, or ell-oh-ell...

Furthermore, if if its to be written in letters, then do I need the hyphens (W-T-F) or is just WTF okay?

I guess the key thing is, we all know exactly what to think when we see WTF. The difference is, that's not what the character is saying. He's actually speaking the abbreviations.

 

[Danny McG]

IDK TBH

 

[HareBrain]

As a reader, if you're going to do this a lot, I'd prefer e.g. WTF, and without hyphens.

 

[The Judge]

I don't see the problem. You don't write other words phonetically, but as they're spelt, and if you read a thriller it won't have people talking about Em-Eye-Five or See-Eye-Eh. And anyway you're not writing phonetically for me if you write "dubya" since I'd pronounce it "double-you"!

So just use the standard abbreviations without the hyphens.

 

[farntfar]

I agree with TJ, but not with much conviction.

FMD ICGAD as Rett Butler would say.

 

[Biskit]

I'm with everyone else - just use the acronym. I think that really you're into the territory of "literary device" here, because even if your character is actual saying "double-u tee eff", I think that's going to get variously confusing or irritating after a while. On the other hand, if you character was in the habit of phrasing it as "whiskey tango foxtrot" then I would write it just like that, although again more than a few of those would probably put me off as a reader.

 

[-K2-]

I'm of the opposing view regarding the hyphens, but let me mention this first. Though it might only be one character who uses these initialized expressions, if no other character uses the same combination of words--fully written--in this day and age I'd question (at first) whether the writer was just being lazy like folks writing a text. Yes, I suspect they'll eventually get it, but you risk an initial negative reception until they do...In my opinion.

That said, I disagree with the non-hyphen camp. Think about it, each letter is separately spoken, L, O, L / eL, Oh, eL. If I use the acronym FUBAR, I don't speak each letter being an acronym, so LOL--whether 'we' all know better or not--then falls under the question of 'is it and acronym or initialism?': LahLL, or eL-Oh-eL? Again, we all may 'know' better, and even the reader might, but how often do you find yourself looking up some new internet initialism? There will also be those who don't know (I used to chat with folks online who though able to read English, had their own languages terms for 'hehe, LOL, wtf,' and so on)...and those who simply want to be hardliners and argue the point.

So, I say hyphenate: L-O-L since that is how the character is speaking it, connected as a single initialism, but separate letters.

To push that further, if you were reading off Morse Code in your manuscript, or someone spelling out something, would you:
HELLO, H E L L O, or H-E-L-L-O? Past that, the hyphens connect the letters informing us (in this example) that the letters are connected forming a word...Granted, that argues against my opinion, but one situation is not the same as the other so the rule (in my mind) wouldn't apply.

Lastly, I ran into this issue quite a bit in my current work. My protagonist, Reaper-379, is often referred to in dialogue as '379.' I don't want to clutter the text with "Three-seven-nine, hold still...", or worse as some suggested, "Three hundred, seventy-nine, hold still..." So, I left it as numerals. HOWEVER, I don't want folks thinking, 'three hundred, seventy-nine' as they sound it out in their heads. So in dialogue I write it "3-7-9, hold still..."

I have so many characters and places in my story that have numeric or alpha-numeric designations, I decided to use the system throughout for consistency...and boy does it clean up the text a LOT (that's 'lot' with emphasis BTW, not L-O-T )

K2

 

[BT Jones]

I'm of the opposing view regarding the hyphens, but let me mention this first. Though it might only be one character who uses these initialized expressions, if no other character uses the same combination of words--fully written--in this day and age I'd question (at first) whether the writer was just being lazy like folks writing a text. Yes, I suspect they'll eventually get it, but you risk an initial negative reception until they do...In my opinion.

That said, I disagree with the non-hyphen camp. Think about it, each letter is separately spoken, L, O, L / eL, Oh, eL. If I use the acronym FUBAR, I don't speak each letter being an acronym, so LOL--whether 'we' all know better or not--then falls under the question of 'is it and acronym or initialism?': LahLL, or eL-Oh-eL? Again, we all may 'know' better, and even the reader might, but how often do you find yourself looking up some new internet initialism? There will also be those who don't know (I used to chat with folks online who though able to read English, had their own languages terms for 'hehe, LOL, wtf,' and so on)...and those who simply want to be hardliners and argue the point.

So, I say hyphenate: L-O-L since that is how the character is speaking it, connected as a single initialism, but separate letters.

To push that further, if you were reading off Morse Code in your manuscript, or someone spelling out something, would you:
HELLO, H E L L O, or H-E-L-L-O? Past that, the hyphens connect the letters informing us (in this example) that the letters are connected forming a word...Granted, that argues against my opinion, but one situation is not the same as the other so the rule (in my mind) wouldn't apply.

Lastly, I ran into this issue quite a bit in my current work. My protagonist, Reaper-379, is often referred to in dialogue as '379.' I don't want to clutter the text with "Three-seven-nine, hold still...", or worse as some suggested, "Three hundred, seventy-nine, hold still..." So, I left it as numerals. HOWEVER, I don't want folks thinking, 'three hundred, seventy-nine' as they sound it out in their heads. So in dialogue I write it "3-7-9, hold still..."

I have so many characters and places in my story that have numeric or alpha-numeric designations, I decided to use the system throughout for consistency...and boy does it clean up the text a LOT (that's 'lot' with emphasis BTW, not L-O-T )

K2

Thanks @-K2- and everyone else. I am now convinced to go with abbreviations, but also hyphens. I agree with you K2 and I think that might just be the difference between people reading the phrase and reading the letters.

 

[tinkerdan]

This is a pertinent question.
I had a Range of Motion suit that my characters referred to as a ROM.

The editors kept wanting to change that to an ROM.

I had to notate it that the characters were saying ROM as a word not R.O.M as abbreviations, so that they would not keep trying to change it.

From there I realized that there were a number of things that had to be addressed in a separate list-note to editors to assist them from distracting themselves over these things.

 

[Biskit]

I had a Range of Motion suit that my characters referred to as a ROM.

The editors kept wanting to change that to an ROM.

Perhaps it's my tech background but I automatically read that as "a ROM" and had to puzzle over an ROM, but then to me ROM is Read-Only Memory and like RAM gets pronounced as one word. I'm trying to think of other examples where people naturally pronounce abbreviations as words for convenience, and come up with a mix - from my chem background, pH is Pee-Aitch, but ml becomes "mil". In IT (AYE-TEE) image and video formats come out as a hybrid mpeg (EMM-PEG) and jpeg (JAY-PEG) but then tiff format is just "tif" whilst bmp is "bitmap".

At this point I'm hitting a brain failure and can't think of any other tech abbreviations, other than mm, cm etc which all really break my theory because I would always say them as millimetre, centimetre etc.

 

[-K2-]

This is a pertinent question.
I had a Range of Motion suit that my characters referred to as a ROM.
The editors kept wanting to change that to an ROM.
I had to notate it that the characters were saying ROM as a word not R.O.M as abbreviations, so that they would not keep trying to change it.
From there I realized that there were a number of things that had to be addressed in a separate list-note to editors to assist them from distracting themselves over these things.

Just a guess, but that sounds like someone was using an automated grammar checker with their occasional inconsistencies (which is disconcerting in and of itself). Even if it was an initialism instead of an acronym, even a word, I'd still think you'd use 'a.' Though it doesn't matter to you, in my own work with so many initialisms and acronyms I've found myself using expressions like 'ROM-suit' (using your example)...So hopefully, I won't have much of "a separate list-note to editors to assist them from distracting themselves over these things." LOL, too funny!

K2

 

[BT Jones]

This is a pertinent question.
I had a Range of Motion suit that my characters referred to as a ROM.

The editors kept wanting to change that to an ROM.

I had to notate it that the characters were saying ROM as a word not R.O.M as abbreviations, so that they would not keep trying to change it.

From there I realized that there were a number of things that had to be addressed in a separate list-note to editors to assist them from distracting themselves over these things.

I have to agree that I would read that as "rom" straight up. Perhaps the way to get around it is to establish early on in the piece what R-O-M stands for and then just have it subsequently referred to as either just rom, 'rom' or 'Rom', without all the capitals. I'm trying to think of another example where something that used to be an abbreviation has now entered the public vocabulary as a word in itself.

 

[HareBrain]

I'm trying to think of another example where something that used to be an abbreviation has now entered the public vocabulary as a word in itself.

Scuba? I don't know for sure if anyone ever called it by its separate initials, but I have seen it written as capitals in old books.

 

[BT Jones]

Scuba? I don't know for sure if anyone ever called it by its separate initials, but I have seen it written as capitals in old books.

Wow, I had no idea that Scuba was an abbreviation. You learn something new every day!

 

[Biskit]

Wow, I had no idea that Scuba was an abbreviation. You learn something new every day!

That's one I discovered in my first job because we had SCBA teams for going into hazardous areas - same abbreviation as scuba but without the under-water part.

 

[Astro Pen]

Just stick with the abbreviations. Military stories tend to be full of the things
The problem I had was 'a' vs 'an'
I now stick with the APA style .

APA Style 6th Edition Blog: Using "a" or "an" With Acronyms and Abbreviations

by Jeff Hume-Pratuch Dear Style Experts, How do you tell whether to use a or an with abbreviations? I assume that an abbreviation is treated just as if it were a word , but I'm having trouble with some examples:...

blog.apastyle.org

Another related issue I bumped into was not using full verbal equivalents because it felt ungainly.So didn't use the full thing. eg.
He's in an ICU at Oakdene Hospital.
to
He's in intensive care at Oakdene Hospital.

 

[.matthew.]

As the OP had decided what to use when I got to this thread I decided not to add anything, but as it keeps going I'll blather on a bit myself,

There's lots of randomness to how we say abbreviations in the common tongue. Just like above ROM is now just spoken, something like HR is read separately, and LOL is a mixed bag with different people treating it differently.

In some ways, this comes down to whether or not it's possible to speak it like a word (is it pronounceable as one)?

The readers will have different ideas about how it should be heard and in the normal text that doesn't matter (let people read it as they like). The problem comes as the OP says, with dialogue and there's too much inconsistency in language to ever sort that out fully.

Personally, I'd like to see the capitalisation removed in cases where it's spoken as a word, and kept when it's meant as a letter by letter. I know this isn't currently the case but it is getting there with lol generally being lowercase and pronounced well... lol. As the most common abbreviation on the planet at this point, there's a nice precedent there.

"I went scuba diving last weekend," she said.
"You want to upgrade the ram, mister?"
"That's so funny, LOL."
"lol, you're an idiot sometimes."
"I'm taking this all the way to HR, you pig!"

The only time I've ever used the deliberate hyphens is when a character was really highlighting the letters for emphasis,
"O-M-G, what happened to you? You look like a ghost."

 

[Danny McG]

How many people say PIN number?
Even while knowing that the last N represents number anyways

 

[-K2-]

Scuba? I don't know for sure if anyone ever called it by its separate initials, but I have seen it written as capitals in old books.

I agree, and more the point to hyphenating in dialogue (in this case to ensure each letter is spoken individually), but most of all establishing a system and sticking with it.

LOL is relatively obvious as to whether it's a word or initialism, lol less so, but Lol if you began a sentence--even when I've written it over the years in chat--always makes me question it. And since he's using casual chat/text lingo in his dialogue instead of technical terms or proper nouns, I'd expect sentence starting uppercase initialisms, and lowercase otherwise.

Intentionally, I have a bunch of acronyms and initialisms in what I'm working on. Heck, the deuteragonist is 'Pogue (person of greater use elsewhere),' the primary antagonist is the 'RCFG (Restored Constitution Federal Government),' not the impotent 'CAS (Consolidated American States government),' that is oppressing the 'P's (peeps/people),' who speak 'P-say (Peoples Language),' write in 'P-bit (Peoples Alphabet),' and who in turn hate the 'G's (government anything)'...blah, blah, blah.

Some of that is unconventional (like, G's and P-say), but by establishing a standard and sticking to it, I HOPE the reader will be accepting or at the least forgiving.

"That's so funny, LOL."
"lol, you're an idiot sometimes."
"I'm taking this all the way to HR, you pig!"

The only time I've ever used the deliberate hyphens is when a character was really highlighting the letters for emphasis,
"O-M-G, what happened to you? You look like a ghost."

I think that's the point...In your first two examples--I would read that as--NOT someone speaking each initial but actually laughing, which should be OUT of the quote (I'd think). In the third your example is spoken as two letters, but it's a well known (decades old) initialism, most likely in a dialogue where there aren't a lot (of initialisms) throughout the MS. Your last example (O-M-G) is exactly what his character is saying and how, throughout. He is speaking text lingo initialisms, sounding out each letter.

K2...and no, K2 is not an abbreviation. It's an alpha-numeric name.

 

[.matthew.]

LOL is relatively obvious as to whether it's a word or initialism, lol less so, but Lol if you began a sentence--even when I've written it over the years in chat--always makes me question it. And since he's using casual chat/text lingo in his dialogue instead of technical terms or proper nouns, I'd expect sentence starting uppercase initialisms, and lowercase otherwise.

Hah, missed that when I typed it out. Probably for the same reason that Lol looks a little off and in messaging I'll correct it to all lowercase. Good catch though

I think that's the point...In your first two examples--I would read that as--NOT someone speaking each initial but actually laughing, which should be OUT of the quote (I'd think).

I don't know many people who actually laugh out loud when they type that. Actually nobody at all, it's more of a text talk way of saying 'that's funny'. I do know people who say the actual word 'lol' though, and I'm sure there are people who say the letters too (depends on where you live I guess).

In many ways, it will all come down to where you come from as acronyms and slang aren't universal and have very few rules set in stone. For me, if I see all caps in a word that isn't being emphasised (so not text SHOUTING), I will automatically shift into letter-mode and read it as individual characters.

If I said the letters O, M, and G then was asked to write it down I'd write it as OMG (because there's no emphasis, only letters)
If I was doing an over the top Ohhh eMMM Geee (like a gossipy teenager) and had to write it, I'd use O-M-G (to highlight the extension of the word)