I tend to use lol and Brazilian Rainbow Boa occasionally, but those are the only ones I know. I'll try and cut down on the usage You made an excellent point though Merlin. That's one of the reasons I made an updated abbreviations/acronym list on my site. With all the acronyms out there for herps, it could get confusing, even if english is your main language. I included scientific names too cause common names vary, I've got a friend in the netherlands who has trouble with all the common names people come up with.

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+5 bonus points to whoever finds me a job!

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

The simple little abbreviations commonly used in chat like Brazilian Rainbow Boa and LOL are fine. They are not really the problem. Its when sentences are made up of the type of verbage I listed that the confusion begins.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

I hav no clu wut ur saying

I think this is an excellent idea. If I can hardly read the some of the sentences, I would never think someone who is not fluent in english would even be able to start to comprehend. I also think that punctuation should be used. Nothing serious but how hard is it to insert a period or comma every once in a while?

Beside the initial point made by Merlin there's a second one even more important IMHO (in my humble opinion), searching.
If u writ lik this, we can understand but search engines don't. The forum search will not find appropriate results, HC will be indexed for gibberish by major search engines, etc.

On my site, I've made it a requisite for membership, whether you write proper Portuguese or you don't write anything at all.

Either way, thanks from a non (english) native speaker =)

So far I learnd what lol means,and lmao!But with a post written in shortcut I'm in trouble and I need to read really slow to understand it,'cause english is not my language.But I love to use "lol",because it can express a feeling (laughter) which you can't see on the computer,and I think "lol" is very nice! I love to use it,because you guys can be so funny sometimes that it's great to show you I need to laugh!! I think I even saw "lol" on a german forum,so it must be an international computer language!LOL!

LOL LOL LOL Jacky

LOL... Rich actually told me that one, I didnt know it either

oops sorry, i do have a problem with using shorthand. I didn't stop to think about the international part of it. I'll try to speak in clear english from now on

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-Adam

"Help Protect our Planet from Overcollection, Purchase Aquacultured Livestock and Captive Bred Herps"

Folks,

I am in total agreement on this subject. My kids not only IM like tis but now they write notes this way too. Heck, I had enough trouble with English when I was in school 25 years ago, I sure do not need to start learning a new language now!

Steven

Can we still use things like Chinese Water Dragon when referring to Chinese water dragons? Or should we start to type it out? I agree that many people don't understand shorthand at all. I didn't even think about it before, but it does kind of bother me when things like "wut" are used.

Thanks for letting us know Merlin.

Beth

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0.1.0 Brazilian Rainbow boa (Sakura)
1.1.0 Leopard geckos (Tasuki, Sango)
2.0.0 Ball pythons (Tsume, Kenshin)