I am new to the forums and figured out that PTL meant, "Push The Limit." A few other were obvious as well.

Then people started talking about, "Vi." I had no idea who this, "Vi" person was. Was she a crew member? A named pilot? I looked everywhere before giving up and thinking it was something that was so obscure that it didn't matter.

Until, in a post I was just reading about a gentleman asking for his tournament list to be reviewed, he typed, "VI" and I was like: "Veteran Instincts" and kept reading the post.

Then it clicked that "Vi" was just the same but some people had made the decision NOT to capitalize that last character.

Thanks, guys and girls, for forgetting a SHIFT button and causing my head to hurt

Yes, i try to to not write the short names for that very reason, it annoys the hell out of newcomers for no reason than saving less than a quarter of a second writing it.

But i'm old and every millisecond counts!

I do it to reduce the number of characters that have to be delivered to your screen. Less data -> Less power -> Saving the environment and all that...

Are you DTF?

Vi? Stands for violence!

Are you DTF?

You a dirty...

Yup, had to look that one up also.

Touche'

Yup, had to look that one up also.

Touche'

Some of the guys are just funny... funny and dirty.

My work here is done

it's best to spell things out once and then abbreviate later in the post/thread. It's easy to get lazy and abbreviate stuff, especially in discussions that primarily involve mostly players who are familiar with the abbreviations. Still, we should try and be clear when possible, and I don't know how many times I have seen a thread asking for suggestions by a player who clearly states that they are new, and then half the responses are a mess of abbreviations.

P.S. make sure your abbreviations make sense, most things can be figured out easily even by a beginner with a bit of logical thought but knock it off with stuff like "OMG" as an abbreviation for Omicron Group pilot.

Probably typing on a tablet if mobile device of some sort. It is noticeably more effort to capitalize a random letter on some mobile keyboards than to just hold the shift key with your pinky. I'm something of a perfectionist in my typing, and even I'll let some grammar, punctuation and capitalizations slide when typing on my iPad.

heck I still think EU is European Union!!!

When I first joined I didn't know what FLGS (friendly local game store) was. I thought it was some kind of gaming organization or something