Things that irk you......

Half the schools in Conference USA, which itself often gets the initial treatment, also need initials just to keep from taking up entire blocks of copy.
UTEP.
UAB.
UTSA.
Florida International, Florida Atlantic and Western Kentucky have also tried to force feed the initials to us, but I still spell them out except in headlines.

The abbreviation that has gotten on my nerves a lot is UConn. It's fine on second reference or in headlines, but it annoys the hell out of me that AP uses that on first reference.

 

guessing it's bc Connecticut is a pretty long word. Funny, you almost never hear the school referred to as the University of Connecticut. Thanks to the success of the basketball programs, it's a household abbreviation

 

I can't even put a finger on why I don't like it. I have no problem with LSU, Ole Miss or TCU, for example. Maybe it's just because it suddenly went from being a household nickname to standardized by the AP overnight that it caused some whiplash.

 

What about UMass?

 

Same deal as UConn, only moreso since UMass is not in the national spotlight as much.
Maybe it's a regional thing. Here in the south, you can say LSU, TCU and Ole Miss and everybody knows what you're talking about. If you don't call it that, you look stupid. Papers in New England might call them Louisiana State, Texas Christian and Mississippi, though, which would make sense for there.
Similarly, New England papers could call them UConn and UMass and no one blinks an eye, whereas down here a reader might see that and pause for a moment to make the connection.

 

My last name is spelled different than the norm -- think Smythe/Smith or Thomson/Thompson -- so I get irked every time I Google something and the message comes back

Did you mean "Poin Files" and Smith?

No, I didn't. I can spell my own name.

 

I remember hearing somebody saying UConn and thinking, Yukon, what the fuck?

 

When someone puts the volume control on an odd number greater than 10 (except 13 -- that's fine).
Same with the time setting on a microwave oven.
People in the checkout line who pull out one bill at a time from their wallet and one coin at a time from their oval coin container with the slit down the middle.

 

I don't care what the lazy bastards at the AP say, I think, with rare exception (UCLA and IUPUI are the only ones off the top of my head) the others should be spelled out in first reference in a story. It's just basic logic.

You can abbreviate the hell out of them after that.

A regional reader might know the school in which you refer, but the average reader might not.

OU? Is it Oregon or Oklahoma? KU? Is it Kansas or Kentucky (and if it's the University of Kansas, shouldn't it be UK?)? And don't get me started on Wazzou. Yes, it sounds kind of cool to abbreviate Missouri as Mizzou (on second reference, of course), but who the hell came up with Wazzou? Isn't that, like, your ass or something?

UConn is just lazy, inept (but work cheaply) agate monkeys who couldn't spell Connecticut if it were on a globe (then again, a cheaply-working agate monkey probably has no clue what the fuck a globe is, so there is that).

Funny thing is, they spell out Louisiana-Monroe, but can't find the time for Louisiana State.

 

Can hardly wait for the next bowl game between Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College vs. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

 

Doesn't understand what you're upset about

 

People who stare at the map on their phone while weaving all over the road.
Figure out where you're going and how to get there before you start the car, assclowns.