This is a notice to all members. While we realize that with the advent of text messaging and IM's it has become fashionable to write in a "shortcut" type of fashion. Please refrain from doing this on this forum and in our chatroom. Keep in mind that this is an international forum and for some members english is a secondary language. It can be difficult enough for them to translate posts in regular english into something they can understand. While things written like and may be totally legible to you and your friends, to some of our members they appear as totally indeciperable gibberish.
Lets keep Herpcenter "user friendly" for ALL our members.
Thanks

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Good point, Merlin. As an English teacher in Switzerland, I personally find it irritating and I know that my students would be COMPLETELY lost if they read something like that!!!
Thank you!!!

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Andrea

Heck Andrea, there are some times when I have to re-read it to see what was being said!

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Thank you for mentioning that, Merlin! I have a lot of trouble reading "shorthand" on forums...

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~Juliane~

In the chat room, I'd get really interested when I read "Brazilian Rainbow Boa" because I thought they were going to start a conversation about Brazilian Rainbow Boas ... you can imagine how disappointed I got when the person left the chat room right afterwards!!!

Very frustrating!

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Andrea

Hello,

I would have to agree with this. I myself use it when chatting with friends off board, but I don't do so in the public domain. There are just too many nationalities for word plays to be used.

In addition to the difficult translation, members that come across that and don't realize that it is shorthand, think the site is loaded with misspelled words. That could cause people to be turned away. In all actuality, posters that use proper grammar actually receive more hits. People are turned off by the shorthand.

I went one step further and added a spellcheck to the site. It doesn't catch every word as it only contains roughly 50,000-100,000 words in the dictionary. (I will search out a better dictionary list once I am caught up with everything.) It does however help correct spelling mistakes. I use it on all my posts. lol

Brazilian Rainbow Boa, LOL, AFK things like that have always been used in chat, they are not english cut short like cuz and wut and ur,

I am hoping we can still use these abbreviations ?

I've never used chat rooms before this. Now I know what Brazilian Rainbow Boa, lmao and lol mean but what does AFK mean?
(I don't really mind those kinds of shortcuts... now I just ask when I don't get it.)

PS -- Rich I think the spell-check is a great idea!

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Andrea

AFK = away from keyboard

Wow I didnt even know that one "LOL" Thanks Donna...Lyn

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Warmest Regards from Lyn