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Very Short Reply Expected

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Re: Very Short Reply Expected

#231
post #185
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NT: No text This one is shorter than the rest, and easy to grok. VSRE OR EOM? I'd have to look those up.

Between NT and EOM why does being shorter make it more obvious, you'd need to look after whichever one you hadn't heard before. If anything I'd say EOM is easier to guess, due to its similarity with other acronyms: EOL (coding) EOP (business) where EO always stands for End Of.

I agree. I'd never guess what NT stood for. Even if I managed to deduce what it meant and how to use it by its usage patterns, I'd still not be able to guess. It reminds me of NB -- an acronym I learned how to use from context and even began using myself occasionally, only years later realizing I didn't actually know what it stood for.

EOM, on the other hand, is immediately clear to me because of it's similarity to EOL (end-of-line) and EOF (end-of-file).

Re: Very Short Reply Expected

#232
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That developed organically over many years. RSVP is an now a valid (if peculiar) English word.

Could you elaborate on "developed organically" and "many years"? It seems apparent to me that at some point, someone used the word RSVP for the first time without explaining what it meant. Perhaps by "developed organically" you mean "it happened so long ago that it seems natural now?"

No, I do not mean that it happened so long ago that it seems natural now. I mean that no one ever had to force it unnaturally, unless in the context of a larger and stricter school of etiquette such as the court of Louis XIV in France.

The meaning of the term RSVP was precise and encapsulated well before the word "RSVP" ever came into being. "Please Respond" is a common and well-understood expression for an invitation and RSVP is merely a shortcut and clever reference to specific school of French etiquette that used the phrase "respondez s'il vous plait."

In contrast, VSRE encompasses both a new form of etiquette and a new acronym that doesn't reference anything special.

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