You know you are getting old when:

[Stearmen]

When you are old enough to think people in their mid 30s look so young, but young enough to remember when you thought people in their mid 30s had one foot in the grave!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Textspeak is nothing compared to the early 20th Century fad for "simplified spelling," heavilly promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt. Any word ending with "-ed" would end with a "-t", the "ph-" sound would replaced thruout the language with "f", "-ough" would be replaced by "-o" or "-u," "-ight" would replaced with "-ite," double consonants would be replaced by single consonatns. And so on and on and on -- the idea was to clear out the redunancy and deadwood in the dictionary and create a language in tune with the fast pace of 20th Century life.

You know you're getting old when you write "thru" and "nite" and "lite."

 

[2jakes]

You know you’re getting old when you text like you are writing a letter!

When I first got my cell phone I would reply to text messages similar
to when I wrote a letter. Lengthy!

Friends that I’ve known for years would text with symbols &
a minimum of words.

I felt I was no longer communicating with a friend,
but a machine.

The other day someone wanted to play tennis.

The message I received was..... “playin?”

I usually would reply with a time, location & thanked them for asking.

But this time I replied...."might!”

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

There were many similar language shortcuts practiced with telegraphy, since people paid by the word, they tried to eliminate unnecessary words like articles while getting their meaning across. Sometimes this was fun, like the time a journalist realized he had forgotten an important question when interviewing Cary Grant. He telegraphed Grant:
"How old Cary grant?"
Grant wired back: "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"

 

[DNO]

You certainly know you're getting old when you overhear a young woman in a rummage sale holding up a CD and asking her friend: "Have you ever heard of Frank Sinatra?"

Or another young woman in a thrift store holding up a DVD and exclaiming: "Who's Shirley Temple? Is that a girl's name?"

'Tis to weep.

 

[GHT]

We go to a festival at the end of August known as The Twinwood Festival. Originally the area was known after the farm, called Twinwood farm. During WW2 the farm was requisitioned by The Ministry of Defence and it became an airfield. In keeping with it's previous name, the RAF called the airfield RAF Twinwood. It was from this airfield that Glenn Miller took off from, never to be seen again.
I have probably recounted the above story to people under thirty more times than I can remember, when asked about the sort of events I like going to. Not one single, under 30 year old that I've spoken to has ever heard of Glenn Miller. And only one, recognised "In The Mood."
In their defence, I suppose that if you turned the tables, I would be hard pushed to name a band or recognise a tune from the early 70's on. But modern popular music has never produced a charismatic musician, leader and hero like Miller.

 

[p51]

That's why I dislike acronyms. If you're too lazy to type out the words, you deserve to be misunderstood.

Heck, on forums you see it often. On a RR related forum, one thread was filled with terms and acronyms I had no clue what anyone was talking about, and I posted asking where the decoder was so I could have any idea what anyone was talking about. Nobody got what I meant.
Forums can be so insular that people forget if you don't live there, you might not have a clue of the inside mentions, jokes and such...

You know you’re getting old when you text like you are writing a letter!

Oh dear God, you are so right. I've even written a text on my computer, sent it via email, then cut and pasted it into a text because it'd take much longer to text what I exactly wanted to say. I wonder what people think when they get those long texts with complete words and punctuation...

 

[GHT]

You know you’re getting old when you text like you are writing a letter!

That's a sign of getting old? Good grief, and there was me thinking that it was good manners.

 

[EngProf]

Heck, on forums you see it often. On a RR related forum, one thread was filled with terms and acronyms I had no clue what anyone was talking about, and I posted asking where the decoder was so I could have any idea what anyone was talking about. Nobody got what I meant.
Forums can be so insular that people forget if you don't live there, you might not have a clue of the inside mentions, jokes and such...
Oh dear God, you are so right. I've even written a text on my computer, sent it via email, then cut and pasted it into a text because it'd take much longer to text what I exactly wanted to say. I wonder what people think when they get those long texts with complete words and punctuation...

It's not really age-related, but on the subject of acronym misuse you can't beat government science or environmental agencies. I worked for one for a while.
I remember one case in which there was an acronym (ABCD) whose third letter C was the first letter of a second acronym (CGZ) whose last letter Z was the first letter of a third acronym (ZWXY).
I am 100% convinced that no one ever really understood who was doing what in those agencies.

 

[Zombie_61]

You certainly know you're getting old when you overhear a young woman in a rummage sale holding up a CD and asking her friend: "Have you ever heard of Frank Sinatra?"

Or another young woman in a thrift store holding up a DVD and exclaiming: "Who's Shirley Temple? Is that a girl's name?"

'Tis to weep.

At one point not long after CDs had all but replaced vinyl albums our local music store still had several "leftover" albums along the back wall of the store. As I was there browsing one day a young man who appeared to be in his mid- to late-teens approached the front counter with an album in his hands and asked, "Is this a calendar?" I'm not sure which was worse--the fact that he didn't know what it was, or the thought that he apparently grew up in a home in which his parents had neither a turntable nor record albums.

 

[Stearmen]

Heck, on forums you see it often. On a RR related forum, one thread was filled with terms and acronyms I had no clue what anyone was talking about, and I posted asking where the decoder was so I could have any idea what anyone was talking about. Nobody got what I meant.
Forums can be so insular that people forget if you don't live there, you might not have a clue of the inside mentions, jokes and such...

Oscar Kilo!

 

[2jakes]

That's a sign of getting old?

Good grief, and there was me thinking that it was good manners.

Sadly it is.
I’m realizing that good manners & texting are really not relevant
in communicating today.
Everything is brief & instant.


And more of “You Know You’re Old.....

1. Your easy chair has more options than your car.
2. You’re asleep, but others worry you’re dead.
3. It takes several tries to get up from the couch.
4. You and your teeth no longer sleep together.

Cheers!

 

[Edward]

On the subject of acronyms, anyone remember OFAS?

Zombie, my folks got out of vinyl in the early seventies (for compact cassettes- the format of the future!). Before i was born, but I still knew what a record was, long before I got my first tutntable at sixteen. Lot of kids miw have never seen one. The really scary thing is how many kids growing up now recognise the save symbol on their Word or similar as meaning 'save', but have no concept as to what it means as they've never seen a 3.5" diskette...

At one point not long after CDs had all but replaced vinyl albums our local music store still had several "leftover" albums along the back wall of the store. As I was there browsing one day a young man who appeared to be in his mid- to late-teens approached the front counter with an album in his hands and asked, "Is this a calendar?" I'm not sure which was worse--the fact that he didn't know what it was, or the thought that he apparently grew up in a home in which his parents had neither a turntable nor record albums.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

You know you're getting old when, watching a porn movie you think to yourself, " That bed looks comfortable"

TTFN

 

[LizzieMaine]

From a writing perspective, acronyms have their place -- writing out the full name of whatever you're talking about on every reference is clumsy, and therefore bad, writing. As long as you use the full name on first reference no editor will criticize you for using the acronym in the rest of the piece.

The Golden Age of Acronyms was the mid-1930s. Just about every American could tell you about the NRA, the AAA, the WPA, the CCC, the NLRB, the CWA, the FHA, the NYA, the SSA, the TVA, the FSA, and the PWA. The novelty singing group "The Yacht Club Boys" set these and other acronyms to music in their song "You've Got To Know Your ABCs Today," a popular radio hit of 1934.

 

[Fading Fast]

From a writing perspective, acronyms have their place -- writing out the full name of whatever you're talking about on every reference is clumsy, and therefore bad, writing. As long as you use the full name on first reference no editor will criticize you for using the acronym in the rest of the piece.

The Golden Age of Acronyms was the mid-1930s. Just about every American could tell you about the NRA, the AAA, the WPA, the CCC, the NLRB, the CWA, the FHA, the NYA, the SSA, the TVA, the FSA, and the PWA. The novelty singing group "The Yacht Club Boys" set these and other acronyms to music in their song "You've Got To Know Your ABCs Today," a popular radio hit of 1934.

Is there a standard for whether the acronym should be parenthetically referenced immediately after the full name is used on the first reference, such as Tennessee Valley Association (TVA)? It seems to me - just based on memory - that was the standard way to do, but today I've noticed that the parenthetical use of the acronym after the full name is first used - to tie the two together - doesn't happen often and the assumption is the reader will just get it when the acronym pops up sentences or paragraphs later.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd think it depends on the style manual you use. I was taught to say it in full on first reference, and then acronym thereafter, but I was writing for the ear, not the eye. When I see full/parenthesis it's usually in academic or technical writing -- our digital projection manuals are full of this.

I was also taught there were exceptions -- when the acronym is well known enough, full on first was optional. You didn't need to say "Joe Blow was a star on the network of the National Broadcasting Company," you could say "Joe Blow was a star on NBC." Other acronyms that would fit this pattern would be things like the FBI, the CIA, etc.

It's never, ever acceptable to refer to the Secret Service by an acronym.

 

[Fading Fast]

That all makes sense. I always try to think about punctuation, style rules, etc., with the guiding principal being they should help the reader (hardly an original thought). So, if you are using the acronym for something not that common, then using the parenthesis after the first usage makes sense to me as it embeds the acronym in the readers mind - especially if you aren't going to use the acronym for many paragraphs. However, if you use the acronym, say within the same paragraph, you probably don't need the parenthesis after the first usage as the reader will connect it back when he or she sees the acronym for the first time as the full name will still be fresh in his or her mind.

 

[GHT]

It's never, ever acceptable to refer to the Secret Service by an acronym.

Nor Chester Council's Street Cleaning High Impact Team.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I wonder what the acronym for Friends University of Central Kansas would be