Strange words in postings?

[EuGene Smith]

Often I see in someone's posting a word (generally standing alone) such as "bump" or "snip" and don't know what is meant by the useage of these terms. Can anyone explain them to me?

I think I need a Computerese to English dictionary!

Eu

[David A. Goldfarb]

"Bump" is when someone posts an essentially empty post just to get the thread back on the "new posts" list, because they want to see if there are any new responses to their query, or perhaps to bump up a For Sale ad.

"Snip" is when someone quotes another post but edits out a segment, so they might say "snip" instead of just using ellipses, as one would in normal writing.

[EuGene Smith]

Thanks, David. Now those terms make sense to me. EuGene

[wfwhitaker]

[snip]Now those terms make sense to me[snip]

bump

[Vaughn]

"ellipses"?

[reellis67]

...

[Murray]

are "ellipses" the plural(ity) of "ellipsis"?

[Marko]

No, "ellipses" are the plurality of "ellipse" (a type of curve in geometry).

Ellipsis is normally a single character that cannot be displayed correctly in HTML because it falls outside of the plain ASCII, so it is normally substituted with three consecutive period characters (dots) like at the end of this sentence...

But this being the World Wild Web, words often get used in a more liberal and even dyslexic manner than in formal correspondence, and this includes both spelling and grammar, for which some people still care a lot, while many others "could care less".

[EuGene Smith]

. . . at least those who "could care less" have admitted by default to some modicum of feeling for or interest in the subject matter, as opposed to those who "couldn't care less" and therefore have totally dismissed the subject as not worthy of their concern.

Eu

[Greg Lockrey]

How about the word "sticky"?