Quotes & Sayings About Abbreviations

There is no fast, easy shortcut for the word abbreviation. — Dana Gould

the poorly typed lines, the symbols and abbreviations of Internet chat that make such language seem so much like a process of decay. As — Garth Greenwell

One common abbreviation used in Roman letters was SPD, which was short for salutem plurimam dicit, or "sends many greetings." This served as a greeting at the beginning of a letter, to indicate the sender and the receiver, as in "Marcus Sexto SPD" ("Marcus sends many greetings to Sextus"). Another popular acronym was SVBEEV, which was short for si vales, bene est, ego valeo ("if you are well, that is good, I am well"). Such abbreviations saved space and time, just as acronyms (BTW, AFAIK, IANAL) do today in Internet posts and text messages. — Tom Standage

Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound ... Q.E.D. — Norman Ralph Augustine

THOMAS JEFFERSON LEFT POSTERITY an immense correspondence, and I am particularly indebted to The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published by Princeton University Press and first edited by Julian P. Boyd. I am, moreover, grateful to the incumbent editors of the Papers, especially general editor Barbara B. Oberg, for sharing unpublished transcripts of letters gathered for future volumes. The goal of the Princeton edition was, and continues to be, "to present as accurate a text as possible and to preserve as many of Jefferson's distinctive mannerisms of writing as can be done." To provide clarity and readability for a modern audience, however, I have taken the liberty of regularizing much of the quoted language from Jefferson and from his contemporaries. I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive," and have, in most cases, expanded contractions and abbreviations and followed generally accepted practices of capitalization. — Jon Meacham

Know the official post office abbreviations for all 50 states without having to consult a list. — Marilyn Vos Savant

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram. — Karl Kraus

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them. — Sylvia Plath

Frequently, crashes are followed with a message like 'ID 02'. 'ID' is an abbreviation for idiosyncrasy and the number that follows indicates how many more months of testing the product should have had. — Guy Kawasaki

The abbreviations (e.g. NATO, UN, USSR - E.W.) denote that and only that which is institutionalized in such a way that the transcending connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact. — Herbert Marcuse

She loathed all the IM and texting abbreviations and acronyms. She was a snob like that — Jessica Park

DNA is an abbreviation for deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, a complex string of syllables. — Dave Barry

Rolf! what? are you really rolling on the floor laughing? well, please stay down there for a sec while I KICK YOUR ASS. — David Levithan

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us. — Alain De Botton

These reports that are not explained by natural phenomena or exploding outhouses are known as UFO's, which is the official abbreviation for Unidentified Flying Objects. I suppose it could also stand for Uncommonly Fat Orangutans, but in this case it does not. — Cuthbert Soup

The military loves its alphabet soup. At CILHI, I was issued a glossary of acronyms as thick as my arm. KIA/BNR: killed in action, body not recovered. DADCAP: dawn and dusk combat air patrol; AACP: advance airborne command post; TRF: tuned radio frequency. Or trident refit facility. I guess context is important for that one. But you get the idea. It makes a civilian want to join the AAAAAA: the Association for the Abolition of Abused Abbreviations and Asinine Acronyms. — Kathy Reichs

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility. — Robert Wilson Lynd

Sorry to interrupt, boys and girls," Logan calls out, "but it's time to put your p's and v's away. Gotta go, G."

I shoot Garrett a blank look. "P's and v's?" Half the time I can barely make sense of Logan's made-up acronyms and abbreviations.

Garrett grins at me. "Oh come on, really? Even I got one. It's grade school shit."

I think it over, then blush. "How exactly does one put away their vagina?"

He snickers. "Ask Logan. Actually, please don't. — Elle Kennedy

Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing. — Franz Grillparzer

And if we really want to stay current and relevant, we have to use social media. And by that I mean Facebook. There are one billion people on Facebook. Maybe older people should have our own social media. We can call it What Did That Doctor Do to Your Face Book? In fact, we can have our own text and Facebook abbreviations. We can have our own WTF, LOL, and LMAO. GNIB: Good news, it's benign. OMG: Oh, my gout. DMMLIMNWD: Don't make me laugh, I'm not wearing Depends. WAI: Where am I? ITIHSBCR: I think I had sex but can't remember. ILI: I like Ike. TKDC: The kids didn't call. DTLSTY: Does this look swollen to you? CTDMELOFM: Call the doctor - my erection lasted over four minutes. PAMUHNASIHSB: Put a mirror under his nose and see if he's still breathing. Bottom line: we can't be dial-up in a Wi-Fi world. — Billy Crystal

There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory - the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements - the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering pink which one sees when the eyes are closed, the feeling of being swept away by a river or by sleep. These second degree objects can be combined with others; using certain abbreviations, the process is practically an infinite one. There are famous poems made up of one enormous word, a word which in truth forms a poetic object, the creation of the writer. The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them. — Jorge Luis Borges

Open the "book of life" and you will see a "text" of about 3 billion letters, filling about 10,000 copies of the new York Times Sunday edition. Each line looks something like this:
TCTAGAAACA ATTGCCATTG TTTCTTCTCA TTTTCTTTTC ACGGGCAGCC
These letters, abbreviations of the molecules making up the DNA, could easily mean that the anonymous donor whose genome has been sequenced will be bald by the age of fifty. Or they could reveal that he will develop Alzheimer's disease by seventy. We are repeatedly told that everything from our personality to future medical history is encoded in this book. Can you read it? I doubt it. Let me share a secret with you: Neither can biologists or doctors. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The word abbreviation sure is long for what it means. — Zach Galifianakis

SM is an abbreviation of both stock market and sadomasochism
and there are those who think they are one and the same. — Malcolm Forbes

You have to make your own condensed notes. You learn from MAKING them. A lot of thinking goes into deciding what to include and exclude. You develop your own system of abbreviations and memory methods for the information. — Peter Rogers