IMHO is an acronym for “In My Humble Opinion” that was born in the early days of the internet and chat rooms. Online communication quickly developed shorthand to compensate for the loss of nonverbal cues and for convenience. Acronyms like LOL and shorthand like brb and afk evolved as courtesy measures. Emoticons gained legitimacy to tone down jarring statements. Some acronyms have become commonplace in written and verbal communication.
IMHO is an acronym for “In My Humble Opinion”. It was born in the early days of the internet and chat rooms. Participants in online conversations, often unaccustomed to typing all their thoughts instead of simply expressing them orally, have developed a variety of textual shortcuts to common expressions. IMO, which means “In my opinion,” and IMHO were among the first, along with brb, or “I’ll be right back,” which was used to alert participants that one would be absent from the conversation for a certain amount of time.
“In my humble opinion,” of course, isn’t actually a commonly used expression outside of internet conversation. It developed as a way for users to moderate the things they said online, in the same way that facial expressions, hand gestures and other non-verbal cues help moderate the things people are engaged in in real conversations . When Internet pioneers started using online chat rooms, it quickly became apparent that there were significant differences between online and “analog” forms of communication, such as face-to-face or over the telephone. They quickly developed the shorthand that became ubiquitous over the next few decades to try to compensate for the loss of nonverbal cues, as well as simply for convenience. This has strengthened the understanding that in human communication less than half of the information actually transmitted is conveyed in the words used.
Online communication did not evolve as a keyboard translation of verbal communication. Even neglecting the importance of nonverbal cues, “normal” human conversational communication is rambling and often consists of large numbers of filler words and expressions, such as “ah” and “um.” Also, it takes much longer to fully write most words than to say them. Online conversations quickly developed into a combination of acronyms and shorthand, both to shorten the time it took to express thoughts and to ameliorate the fact that non-verbal cues were non-existent. This evolution proceeded faster with the advent of cell phones and their ability to send text messages.
Among the first Internet acronyms was LOL, or “Laughing Out Loud.” LOL was born because there was no standard for expressing non-verbal sounds, such as laughter, in online communication. Once LOL entered the online lexicon and gained some acceptance, users began building on it, quickly establishing ROFL, or “Rolling On the Floor Laughing.” ROFLMAO and other types of expressions with obscenities quickly followed.
One Internet acronym that really took over from a commonly used expression was brb, which was usually typed in lower case for some reason. It signaled to other participants in a discussion that a user would be away for a while, and was necessary because, since they couldn’t see each other, no one could tell when one of the participants would get up and leave the conversation or actively engage in other pursuits. A similar code was afk, which means “away from the keyboard.” Both of these terms, and a few others, evolved as courtesy measures so that others wouldn’t sit staring at their screens, waiting for responses from people who weren’t there.
IMO and IMHO, for their part, they developed as ways for users to “tone down” what might seem jarring or overly enthusiastic statements. Emoticons, those punctuation symbol combinations meant to indicate facial expressions such as smiles, grimaces, or winks, have gained a degree of legitimacy among Internet conversationalists for the same reason. The terse nature of Internet communications often makes expressions of opinion appear as statements of absolute truth, incontrovertible on their face. For example, “NYY r bst bball team evr” – “The New York Yankees are the best baseball team ever” – might seem hyperbolic to some. IMO, IMHO, or an emoticon like is often added to such statements to make them less jarring, less forceful, and to remind others that the statement is, after all, just an expression of opinion.
After the first bold steps in Internet communication and the development of those first acronyms, some have become commonplace in written and even verbal communication. Instead of laughing out loud, for example, someone might now respond “Lol” to a funny remark. Similarly, while debates about the capabilities and strengths of different sports teams will rage in taverns and living rooms until the end of time, such debates will be heard from time to time punctuated by “IMO, of course… IMHO”.
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