LOL (1989)

[Garson O'Toole]

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:
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> 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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