Have you ever wondered what some of those abbreviations and acronyms are that you see online or on your computer? Today we are going to explore a number of common computer and internet related abbreviations and acronyms. There are abbreviations we all see all the time, but probably don’t give that much thought to. After reading this post hopefully you will give a little more thought to the English words behind these common abbreviations and acronyms you see all the time.
www. = World Wide Web
This is used as the beginning of the address of publicly accessible website.
https = Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
This acronym indicates that an encrypted form of information is being transfered on the Internet.
.com = commercial
This is an abbreviation for a website that was created for commercial purpose by a corporations, businesses, or enterprises.
.org = organization
This website suffix is used for websites run by organizations like nonprofits, i.e. those websites without commercial purposes.
.edu = education
This is an abbreviation used for web addresses that are related to education institutions, i.e. universities and public schools.
.net = network
This internet suffix is used very often by Internet-related companies, such as network providers and website-hosting providers.
.gov = government
All government related websites in the United States end with the suffix .gov.
The most other common internet suffixes that I see online are generally “domain names” and these are related to the various countries of the world and their abbreviated country names. There are too many of these abbreviations to list here, but for example some country abbreviations include: .af = Afghanistan, .dm = Dominica, and .uk = The United Kingdom.
Other suffix abbreviations and acronyms you will likely see while on your computer are:
.doc = document, usually a Word document
.pdf = Portable Document Format
.jpg = Joint Photographic Experts Group
.gif = Graphics Interchange Format
From looking at these common Internet and computing abbreviations and acronyms we can see that much of the first generation Internet language out there is heavily influenced by the English language. The main reason for this is that the Internet was first developed in the United States beginning as early as the 1960s. The future of the Internet is much less likely to be as English-centric though, as the internet has led to so much globalization and sharing. So, in 20 years I may need to be asking all of you out there what the different abbreviations and acronyms that I see on the Internet are instead of me explaining them to you.
