Usage of LOL
Posted by Sandeep
The abbreviation LOL. Laughing out loud. Oh!! I'm so worked up with it. Every now and then, I see people using it in the internet while instant messaging, when commenting on social-networking platforms and sometimes even while communicating face to face. Still worse, people use it in inappropriate and ill-suited contexts.
"Its raining here! Lol"
"I'm bored.. lol"
"My sister ate my burger.. lol"
"LOL!! It sounds really great to hear that.." Honestly, its not. In fact, its totally freaking me out!
It all started when Usenet, a worldwide distributed internet discussion system, was using the abbreviation LOL to express a textual, emphatic expression of laughter. The abbreviation then spread pandemic and became a regular, universal word in the english language.
An analysis of Laccetti and Molsk in their essay entitled "The Lost Art of Writing" states that "Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will not be 'lol' when they read a report that lacks proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous misspellings, various made-up words, and silly acronyms". David Crystal, a linguist, rhetorically questions "How many people are actually 'laughing out loud' when they send LOL?". It is indubitably true!
You can call it as a brand new variety of language emerging or cool language stuff or even expressiveness and richness of the language but the usage of it in business correspondence or corporate world won't be so LOL.