Dear Booksharians, Oy! I've just been guided to a site I wish I'd found when I wrote my first e mail! At the end of a post someone wrote ;oD and being, not too proud, as I am, I asked what that meant. The answer was that it's a sideways smiley face with the mouth open. The dot of the semicolon represents an open and the comma part is a winking eye. The O is a nose and the capital D is the open mouth! Cute. The bonus is that I got a link where several versions of how to make the smiley faces, even kissing, and frownie faces even crying, are described. It turns out that ;oD is the print version of a laughing face. Your screen reader will read these so you can make them if you're feeling playful. Before the smiley face section is a list of commonly used e mail abbreviations. Finally I know what Gerald means when he writes BTW. Between we, was all I could figure, because the BT reminded me of the braille contraction with the lowered b, dots 2 and 3 followed by the t. Now I know it means by the way. I have a couple of comments about a few of these abbreviations. my least favorite was RTM, which implies an impatient directive to read the manual. Speaking up for those of us who get flustered by technical explanations, we've usually read the manual long and fruitlessly before asking. It's just unkind. I think anyone who is impatient with a question can simply not answer it. TIA, thanks in advance, seems like a paltry thanks indeed if the writer isn't thankful enough to express thanks in real words. LOL, I knew and it always makes me smile, but, as some of you have noticed, I enjoy the zillions of variations on hahahahehehahahahahehahah more expressive, as, with screen readers, our voices construct surprising, happy sounding, laughter. GIGO, Garbage in, garbage out...Does that mean, I think what you wrote is garbage so I'm ignoring it? This shorthand isn't new for most of you, but here's the link for anyone who, like me, didn't know all of it. IMHO, in my humble opinion, it was a fun link. HTH someone! http://www.kassj.com/netiquette/smilies.html Always with love, Lissi