Using Acronyms in your posts

[Uhuru N'Uru]

Note: Originally posted in a Forum Thread but moved here as a more suitable place and the original posts been edited to point here as well.

 

Often people use acronyms in a post, assuming the reader knows what it means and just as often they are asked what does it mean.

This Pictoral guide shows how to have the neat and tidy Acronym with a mouse over Popup giving the definition

 

Note: It's poor picture quality but good enough for the task and original quality only got one pic uploaded

 

Accessed from the "Special BBCode" Icon (Left of the Font Dropdown bar).

 

The "Special BBCode" Icon is also a dropdown of BBCode Formats, Special ones, according to LoversLab! Just in case you missed it, they are special.

 

The first in the list is "Acronym", to use select the "Acronym" BBcode Option

 

Which opens the Acronym Window

 

 

Enter the Acronym you want to use

 

How it appears whilst making the post and to repeat within the same post "Copy and Paste" can be used.

 

To apply other Formatting, like Bold or Coloured Text only apply it to the actual acronym Text eg in this example to MO

 

Final result is revealed using Mouse Over Function and takes about a second to appear.

 

The result in the forum
MO

 

Adding an Acronym is a lot quicker to do, than reading/writing this guide.

 

This can be used for any Popup text not just Acronyms, maybe not useful for everyday posts, but Help and support guides and Mod Descriptions by Authors, it's could be useful.

[pornphile]

WTF TINSTAAFL QFT QQ

[SquallPT]

Cool guide, thanks

[myuhinny]

Cool guide. I usually do it 2 ways when posting abbreviations unless I know the person knows what it is. Like if I say to someone to use the OBMM instead of NMM I will do it like this. Use OBMM (oblivion mod manager) instead of NMM (nexus mod manager) for oblivion. That way they will know what you are talking about if they are new and do not know what it is.

[Guest]

thanks for this!

[E.L. Palmer]

I wonder how many 50 page threads on this or any other forum, for instance, would be reduced to 20 pages of pure dialogue if all the acronyms, gifs, images were removed. All these things do is add 'ten feet' of redundant page clutter for 'ten inches' of relevant dialogue.

[Captain Cobra]

I wonder how many 50 page threads on this or any other forum, for instance, would be reduced to 20 pages of pure dialogue if all the acronyms, gifs, images were removed. All these things do is add 'ten feet' of redundant page clutter for 'ten inches' of relevant dialogue.

 

Which is why I have signatures turned off.  Makes the browsing experience infinitely better.

[Uhuru N'Uru]

While editing my posts to make coloured text show better on the new light theme, I noticed this.

I wonder how many 50 page threads on this or any other forum, for instance, would be reduced to 20 pages of pure dialogue if all the acronyms, gifs, images were removed. All these things do is add 'ten feet' of redundant page clutter for 'ten inches' of relevant dialogue.

This makes only a little sense.

 

Acronyms reduce thread size, they dont increase it using the above Guide's Method also defines it with no extra length

 

Defined Acronym

RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual)

 

No Acronym

Read The Fucking Manual

 

Acronym

RTFM

 

Acronym with BBCode Definition

RTFM

 

This clearly disproves the invalid Acronym portion of your statement.

 

GIF's and Images

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so less room is used.

You have a minor point when these are posted purely to say a short phrase, these are rather pointless and rarely the funny statement the poster intended.

Within a guide like this, a simple picture, can help more than words ever could, having written word only guides, I can assure you that, no matter how clear and precise you think you've made it, some readers will be confused by it, some will be just stupid, some may be dyslexic and that can make any text unreadable. Some just didn't understand what you meant, this is typically how it is, the best guides and tutorials always repeat the explanation using different methods. You can be confused by one method and the next makes it obvious, a picture showing what's explained can help make all the words make sense.

 

Then there's always spoiler tags to reduce the size of any lengthy posts, in this case I chose not to use them, because it's an "OP Pictorial".

 

Sometimes images and videos are pointless clutter, not always though and Spoilers eliminate even the pointless variety.

How to add spoiler tags?

 

 

Select the content you want to hide under the Spoiler Tag and Follow above Acronym guide until the selection window

 

Select Spoiler Option

 

Then just press OK

 

The Tags are not applied to the WYSiWYG Editor but they are shown and additional content can be added like this text has been

 

The Image shows as an attachment when posted using the provided uploaders Add to Post system, these appear as Thumbnails in the actual Post

 

To show the full size Image, in your post, directly, you need to right click on the tiny image shown of your uploaded File and click on

Copy Image Location

Then use the normal Image Icon in the WYSiWYG Editor to add it

When you paste the Image Location in to the Image Properties Window you need to remove the thumbnail suffix

_thumb

 

If you've done it right the Image appears in the WYSiWYG Editor as normal

 

 

 

So done right no excessive forum space is used, as to why this poost is spoilered?

Partly because it's not an OP, but mostly because it's a practical example of the subject, How to use Spoiler Tags.