SLOW DOWN! or maybe not…

[Arthur Marshall]

9 minutes ago, IanD said:

Because this is the Internet, and it has been a widely-used abbreviation on message boards and forums for many years?

 

Do you also shout loudly at foreigners in English instead of learning their language?

 

Get with it, daddio... 🙂

It's shorthand for "end of sarcasm", because / is the delimiter for the end of something in Internet-speak -- or http (and other scripting languages) to be more precise... 😉

 

P.S. You do know what "http" stands for, I assume? 🙂

Must admit I've never met /s before, and I've been on message boards and forums since they were invented, so for once I sympathise with Alan! Such a rare occurrence I thought I'd mention it.

[IanD]

8 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Must admit I've never met /s before, and I've been on message boards and forums since they were invented, so for once I sympathise with Alan! Such a rare occurrence I thought I'd mention it.

Maybe it's only some of the geeky technology boards that use it then, it's certainly very common there -- Ars Technica for example... 🙂

 

My point is that if someone doesn't know it would have taken far less time to type "What does /s mean?" than to write a mail berating me for not using "proper English" -- but then I though this was an Internet forum not a GCSE English class, and some people seem to prefer attacking others to answering their own questions... 😉

Edited July 27 by IanD

[TheBiscuits]

17 minutes ago, IanD said:

You do know what "http" stands for, I assume?

 

Yes, and it's not HTML which is the markup language that uses / for a closing tag.

 

I'd assume you'd know that the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is the application layer, not the markup script ...

[IanD]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Yes, and it's not HTML which is the markup language that uses / for a closing tag.

 

I'd assume you'd know that the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is the application layer, not the markup script ...

Oops... 😉

 

(sloppy of me, of course I meant HTML!)

 

Too many FLAs... 😞

Edited July 27 by IanD

[ditchcrawler]

3 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I don't.

 

Unless it means /s (which seems to be meaningless) why do you not write it out in full ? Is it a norty word ?

 

Is it some facebook shorthand used by children ?

Same here

Never seen it on Facebook, I love being referred to as a child, much better than old got 

[IanD]

5 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Same here

Never seen it on Facebook, I love being referred to as a child, much better than old got 

Not used on Facebook, but used in plenty of other places -- it predates emojis, which is probably why Alan wasn't aware of it... 😉 

 

https://www.quora.com/What-does-s-mean

 

"The “/s” notation is an unsung hero in online communication. There already is bold, italics, underline––––––––––––, and s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ to help with online tonal communication, but in this digital realm where tone and nuance can easily get lost in translation, this tag serves as extra clarity amidst the sea of text. Essentially, "/s" is shorthand for denoting sarcasm; a way to ensure that our witty remarks, ironic jabs, and tongue-in-cheek repartee are understood as intended. Without it, unsuspecting readers might unfavorably misconstrue our clever quips."

Edited July 27 by IanD

[ditchcrawler]

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

Not used on Facebook, but used in plenty of other places -- it predates emojis, which is probably why Alan wasn't aware of it... 😉 

 

https://www.quora.com/What-does-s-mean

 

"The “/s” notation is an unsung hero in online communication. There already is bold, italics, underline––––––––––––, and s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ to help with online tonal communication, but in this digital realm where tone and nuance can easily get lost in translation, this tag serves as extra clarity amidst the sea of text. Essentially, "/s" is shorthand for denoting sarcasm; a way to ensure that our witty remarks, ironic jabs, and tongue-in-cheek repartee are understood as intended. Without it, unsuspecting readers might unfavorably misconstrue our clever quips."

I am so glad you told me to help with my education, I an sure I will use it regularly, I just need to make sure the recipient knows what it mans, not many here did

[IanD]

3 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I am so glad you told me to help with my education, I an sure I will use it regularly, I just need to make sure the recipient knows what it mans, not many here did

Hey, don't shoot me, I'm not the one unable to type 15 characters into Google when I see something I don't understand who then types 150 characters into a whinging post instead... 😉 

 

Oh no, I've just used an emoji, maybe people won't understand that either... 😞 

 

I'm sure you also spotted that "Without it, unsuspecting readers might unfavorably misconstrue our clever quips." was in itself sarcastic?

 

Ooh, sarcasm *inside* a post about sarcasm -- how clever!

 

/s

[booke23]

I haven't seen /s before either and I've been using messaging boards since the BBS days of the early 1990's. Everyday's a school day as they say. 

Edited July 27 by booke23

[hider]

Which just goes to confirm that sarcasm IS  the lowest form of language.

[Peugeot 106]

4 minutes ago, booke23 said:

I haven't seen /s before either and I've been using messaging boards since the BBS days of the early 1990's. Everyday's a school day as they say. 

Me neither. Maybe it’s used on dating sites when you say you had have a big “d..k” in case the lass you meet wants a peek

[haggis]

Must admit I have never seen /s before but then again, I haven't felt all that deprived by not knowing what it means. How did we all manage before we had someone so knowledgable to teach us 🙂 

[MtB]

I am SO reminded of this Lewis Carroll quotation from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland":

 

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

 

 

[Tigerr]

1 hour ago, hider said:

Which just goes to confirm that sarcasm IS  the lowest form of language.

Humour, not language. The lowest form of language is American. Easily confused. 

[hider]

I also have heard the lowest form of WIT used in the UK.

None apply on the continent of course where sarcastic humour is rarely understood. 

[IanD]

I find it amusing that people are getting their knickers in a twist more about a jokey two-character bit of shorthand -- which serves the same purpose as emojis, trying to convey feelings/intention in an environment where misunderstandings are frequent -- than the subject of the thread.

 

If you don't like this kind of thing, ignore them and don't use them yourself -- it's a free world, innit?

 

(Disclaimer : no emojis or similar shortcuts were used in writing this post)

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

I find it amusing that people are getting their knickers in a twist more about a jokey two-character bit of shorthand -- which serves the same purpose as emojis, trying to convey feelings/intention in an environment where misunderstandings are frequent -- than the subject of the thread.

 

If you don't like this kind of thing, ignore them and don't use them yourself -- it's a free world, innit?

 

(Disclaimer : no emojis or similar shortcuts were used in writing this post)

I suspect it's, as you suggest, a thing used in the geek boards that know html. No non-professional in the last twenty years has bothered with that to write websites, since the invention of FrontPage in the dark ages. Everybody else used bits of punctuation for smileys or frowns.

The program I still use to maintain my sites is so obsolete I've had to start whacking in bits of code to make it function, but everyone else I know just uses Wordpress and wouldn't know anything about html, or, probably, that such a thing exists.

 

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I suspect it's, as you suggest, a thing used in the geek boards that know html. No non-professional in the last twenty years has bothered with that to write websites, since the invention of FrontPage in the dark ages. Everybody else used bits of punctuation for smileys or frowns.

The program I still use to maintain my sites is so obsolete I've had to start whacking in bits of code to make it function, but everyone else I know just uses Wordpress and wouldn't know anything about html, or, probably, that such a thing exists.

 

 

Yep, totally agree. After writing a few sites with HTML I discovered AOLPress which was BRILLIANT, and basically ripped off by Microsoft when they launched FrontPAGE 98 (which was actually tonnes better). I upgraded to FP2000 when it first came out and used that until about 2013 when a Microsoft 'security' upgrade irreparably busted it. This was the last straw for me after a series of M$ upgrades breaking stuff and I switched to the Mac ecosystem and never looked back. 

 

Anyway back to the subject. I HATE wordpress with a passion mainly because every time I try to use it, it is completely different! Such is the pace of development that if you use it every day that is perhaps fine, but as a 'once every six months' user, I find it, well, unusable. 

 

And so was that horrible replacement M$ launched for FP2K. And as for Dreamweaver.... 

[Midnight]

16 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Yep, totally agree. After writing a few sites with HTML I discovered AOLPress which was BRILLIANT, and basically ripped off by Microsoft when they launched FrontPAGE 98 (which was actually tonnes better). I upgraded to FP2000 when it first came out and used that until about 2013 when a Microsoft 'security' upgrade irreparably busted it. This was the last straw for me after a series of M$ upgrades breaking stuff and I switched to the Mac ecosystem and never looked back. 

 

Anyway back to the subject. I HATE wordpress with a passion mainly because every time I try to use it, it is completely different! Such is the pace of development that if you use it every day that is perhaps fine, but as a 'once every six months' user, I find it, well, unusable. 

 

And so was that horrible replacement M$ launched for FP2K. And as for Dreamweaver.... 

I managed for 28 years using just Notepad++

 

HTML, Javerscript, CSS, PHP, Perl, SQL etc but I never came across /s except in a regular expression 

/s

[MtB]

10 minutes ago, Midnight said:

I managed for 28 years using just Notepad++

 

HTML, Javerscript, CSS, PHP, Perl, SQL etc but I never came across /s except in a regular expression 

/s

 

Ah but you are much cleverer than what I am! 

 

/thick as mince

[IanD]

14 minutes ago, Midnight said:

I managed for 28 years using just Notepad++

 

HTML, Javerscript, CSS, PHP, Perl, SQL etc but I never came across /s except in a regular expression 

/s

It's kind of sad that people don't recognise the language that the WWW was built on. If he was dead, Tim Berners-Lee would be spinning in his grave... 😞

5 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Ah but you are much cleverer than what I am! 

 

/thick as mince

Never quite got that expression...

 

/thick as two short planks

[MtB]

 

29 minutes ago, IanD said:

It's kind of sad that people don't recognise the language that the WWW was built on. If he was dead, Tim Berners-Lee would be spinning in his grave... 😞

Never quite got that expression...

 

/thick as two short planks

 

<stupid as mud>

 

Never quite got that expression...

 

</stupid as mud>

 

(To get the tags right!)

[David Mack]

32 minutes ago, IanD said:

Never quite got that expression...

 

/thick as two short planks

Can you not have thin short planks? And any number of them?

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Can you not have thin short planks? And any number of them?

 

Way back in the day, on a forum long gone, there was a lawyer poster who helped a lot of people and his sig was "Thin-cat lawyer".

 

Took me AGES to realise this was the opposite of "fat-cat lawyer", lol! 

 

/thick as two medium thickness but fairly short planks

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by MtB
Fiddle with it!

[IanD]

15 hours ago, MtB said:

 

Way back in the day, on a forum long gone, there was a lawyer poster who helped a lot of people and his sig was "Thin-cat lawyer".

 

Took me AGES to realise this was the opposite of "fat-cat lawyer", lol! 

 

/thick as two medium thickness but fairly short planks

 

Should have been "thin-dog lawyer", surely?