Here is an example of this monster:
lilcaragirl: Here's a cute little button I made for you!
(insert s/n here): ty
(insert s/n here): ty = thank you
lilcaragirl: Oh.
(insert s/n here): then ur supposed to say yw
lilcaragirl: Why?
(insert s/n here): it means your welcome.
Of course, there are some 'shortcuts' that are fairly understandable and everyone uses them now. LOl is a very popular one stands for "laugh out loud". TTYL stands for "Talk to you later!" and 'C ya' means See 'ya. Those I will except and even use on occasion. But there are two kinds of these "shortcuts" I dislike.
The first one are the shortcuts for short words like "you" becomes "u". If you're taking notes shorthand offline, that's fine. It makes taking notes easier. But typing online is quicker and so it won't take you less than HALF A SECOND to add two more letters to the damn word. The same goes for "ur" for "your", 2 for "to"/"too"/"two" , "l8er" for "later" etc. But at least these, for the most part, you can understand.
Now most people insert the aforesaid words into regular, understandable English. This I can pretty much tolerate, those I really don't understand why they just don't use words. (I've heard it was because of laziness while typing, which I'll get to later.)
Now, sometimes people start "tYpInG lIke dIs" while chatting (or worse) on their website. This is extemely annoying and even harder to understand. EVIL.
Now for the second kind of the shortcuts. All these stupid abbreviations for EVERYTHING. Sometimes these can be useful (lol) for people to get what they want to say across quickly, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous. How useful is it when you have to ask what "ty" means? Or "yw"? This just slows down the communication. Some of you might say "Well, once you know them, then it's ok.". Not so --- people are using this as an excuse to make MORE of these abbreviated letters which makes it harder for people to memorize them ALL. So unless you keep a little list of all this chat crap, then you are not going to understand what this person is saying.