A Twitter Abbreviation Guide

twitter-abbreviation-guide-educationA Twitter Abbreviation Guide To Make Sense Of All That Crazy Talk

Twitter is a wonderful platform to engage, lurk, socialize, read, distribute, share, or otherwise “do something” with ideas and content.

Part of what makes it so useful is its 140 character limit. This requires users to be succinct in each tweet, which in turn has encouraged a bit of ingenuity on the part of the users, often in the form of acronyms and other abbreviations that can make things get confusing in a hurry. In response, we’ve created a list of abbreviations to make sense of all that crazy talk.

That is, until it changes again.

27 Twitter Abbreviations Defined & Explained

. Placing a period at the beginning of a tweet makes that tweet visible to all of your followers, whereas a simple reply will be visible only to responder

# a hashtag; used to join ongoing, asynchronous conversations; a way to categorize your tweet

@ the symbol used to designate a receiver, a “to”

ellipses used to indicate a lack of response, disdain, etc.

DM Direct Message, which are like emails and only visible to receiver, DMs can only be sent to those who follow you

#ICYMI In case you missed it; a way to preface a tweet you’ve already sent before so your close followers can skip it, and less close followers can see it may be something worth checking out because, well, it’s been shared more than once

#FF Follow Friday, a tradition of promoting some of your favorite accounts to follow–on Friday, of course

#TBT Throwback Thursday (time to get nostalgic)

#MM Music Monday (time to shake your rump)

AFAIK As far as I know

HT Hat Tip (informal credit of source)

IDK/IDC I don’t know/care

IKR I l know right!

IMO/IMHO In my opinion/In my humble or honest opinion

MT Modified tweet (indicates a RT has been altered somehow, often for length or clarity)

Mentions The notification area where you see who has tagged you in a message

NSFW Not safe for work (or school); bad language, risque images, etc.

RT Retweet (which means you’re relaying a message from someone you follow to all of your followers)

SMH Shake my head (this is how the kids indicate disappointment, incredulity, etc.)

SMDH Add some sauce to the one above

Subtweet tweeting about someone without tagging them so they can see the tweet (similar to talking about someone behind their back)

TBH To be honest

TFTF Thanks for the follow

TIL Today I learned (popularized on reddit, a way to socialize tidbits you recently discovered and thought were worth sharing)

TL; DR Too long, didn’t read Indicates that, well, the post, content, etc. was too lengthy; can be used sarcastically TY Thank you YMMV Your mileage may vary (implying things may turn out differently for you Subtweet: tweeting about someone without tagging them so they can see the tweet

TY Thank you

YMMV Your mileage may vary (implying things may turn out differently for you)

Further Reading

Twitter Spectrum 1.0

Twitter Spectrum 2.0

Twitter Hashtag Guide

A Twitter Guide by David Truss

How to Decode a Tweet

How To Decode A Tweet; A Twitter Abbreviation Guide