lol (was: Re: /wh/ - /w/)

[Marsha Alley]

Hi, Mark.  Good question.  I've fallen into the tendency to use the lower case *lol* more often now, even though it's a hackneyed cliché.  I use it to denote something like a giggle rather than LOL, which seems to be about guffawing.  I actually did chuckle a little to myself when I wrote that sentence below.  I am my own best audience.  Emoticons don't translate well in some email readers, so I don't use those (utterly aside from their being "cutsie"....erk).  In all, I'd say it's mere laziness in writing.  I do know how to express myself without shorthand, but the casualness of email has gotten me out of the habit.  

I've not spent a lot of time on "serious" mailings lists, academics and such, although I am on one other now.  I find little in the way of emoticons and shorthand like LOL being used there; but informal mailing lists are rife with them as is private email.   I believe it has displaced "ha-ha" which now seems dated and hopelessly square.  Although, why, at nearly 60, I should be concerned with that is beyond me!

Marsha Alley
marshaalley at msn.com<mailto:marshaalley at msn.com>


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  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>>
  Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU<mailto:mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>>
  Subject:      lol (was: Re: /wh/ - /w/)
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Marsha Alley <MARSHAALLEY at MSN.COM<mailto:MARSHAALLEY at MSN.COM>> writes:
  >>>>>

  Right now I'm in Sutherlin, [hwich, lol] is just north of Roseburg.
   <<<<<

  I'm curious about what you mean by "lol". I picked that up as
  e-mail/Internet language for "laughing out loud", along with "rotfl" for
  "rolling on the floor laughing", and I have been used to using them only for
  when I am actually laughing out loud or, respectively, uncontrollably,
  though not actually falling off my chair.

  You, on the other hand, seem to be using it about as equivalent to a :-),
  indicating just that you're making a little joke here. Please understand, my
  intention is not to criticize! We seem to be having a linguistic change in
  progress here. A friend of my wife's scatters "LOL" and "ROTFL" through her
  e-mails the way I shake pepper on my eggs, almost all over.