LOL (1989)

[Garson O'Toole]

Ben Zimmer wrote (March 24th)
>> The latest OED additions include _LOL_ for "laughing out loud," dated
>> to a 1990 version of the Jargon File from Usenet. It also appeared in
>> a FidoNews newsletter dated May 8, 1989 (p. 10, under
>> "MO_ICONS_PLEASE"):

I checked on paper the early "LOL Laughing out loud" match shown in a
snippet in the Google Books database. The volume containing the match
includes issues from 1989 and 1990. However, the issue containing LOL
is dated August 1990. This date of publication is later than the date
of the OED cite and later than Ben Zimmer's cite. This may save work
for others.

Cite: 1990 August, OCLC Micro, What's a Smilie?, Page 31, Volume 6,
Number 4, OCLC Online Computer Library Center. (Google Books snippet;
Verified on paper)

Shorthands

LOL  Laughing out loud
OTF  On the floor (as in rolling on the floor with laughter)
B4  Before
+u  Bless you
BTW  By the way
d/l  download  (u/l  is  for the corresponding upload)
FWIW  For what it's worth
ILY  I love you
IMHO  In my humble opinion
IOW  In other words
OIC  Oh, I see

(Several other abbreviations and emoticons are listed.)

A note at the end of the article states: Erwin Welsch, Becky Wright,
Penny Mattern, and Ginni Voedisch compiled this list but will claim no
further responsibility for it!

http://books.google.com/books?id=b9bgAAAAMAAJ&q=LOL#search_anchor

Garson O'Toole wrote
> Ben, Great work. Google Books has a match with a snippet that displays
> "LOL Laughing Out Loud" in OCLC micro, Volumes 5-6. Those volumes
> appeared in 1989 and 1990. So this match may be before or after the
> FidoNews newsletter dated May 8, 1989. I suspect it is not easy to
> obtain this periodical. Has this cite been checked already by you? or
> OED?
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=b9bgAAAAMAAJ&q=LOL#search_anchor
>
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>> Subject:      LOL (1989)
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> The latest OED additions include _LOL_ for "laughing out loud," dated
>> to a 1990 version of the Jargon File from Usenet. It also appeared in
>> a FidoNews newsletter dated May 8, 1989 (p. 10, under
>> "MO_ICONS_PLEASE"):
>>
>> http://www.textfiles.com/fidonet-on-the-internet/878889/fido0619.txt
>>
>> I cited the newsletter when I supplied early examples of Internet
>> shorthand for Computerworld in 2008:
>>
>> http://www.pcworld.com/article/153504/fwiw_the_origins_of_net_shorthand.html
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
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>
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