Earlier this week I discovered that one of my best friends from college, who is now a professor in his own right, had never seen the abbreviation RT for retweet.  It was a somewhat sobering realization that even though we grew up with personal computers and Internet access, social media ken is not inherent to my generation. Finding out that a good friend, who is one of my more learned contemporaries, was operating without the base vocabulary for today’s online world inspired me to put together a quick primer of acronyms to rule the web.

Five Definitions to Start With

RT - Retweet

A year ago “RT” was added to the beginning of every Twitter post that was a duplicate of someone else’s Twitter post.  It served as a way to acknowledge someone else as the original source of passage.  The use of “RT” has faded since Twitter introduced it’s own protocol for retweeting posts as they stream through the service.

CMS - Content Management System

In a contemporary online context a CMS is a software suite that allows a website owner or manager to enter, revise, and format webpage content without knowing how to code (see CSS, HTML, and XML below)

CSS - Cascading Style Sheet

CSS is part of the modern website coding scheme.  CSS instructions ensure that web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all display data in the same way (something which is not true by default).  It also allows a coder to update the design of every page simultaneously.  Previously it was necessary to go into each page individually to affect site wide modifications.

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language

HTML is what most people think of as “website code.”  In reality, it is a highly complex system of editor’s marks (”tags”) that let website developers tell web browser programs (like Internet Explorer) how certain content should be displayed.

Officially, HTML is still in its 4^th generation, but several newer web browsers have been programmed to recognize tags from the 5^th generation (HTML 5.0), which is currently under development.

XML - Extensible Markup Language

XML is a variant form of “website code.”  As with HTML, it can operate as a set of editor’s marks to explain how a web page should display.  However, it is also frequently used when multiple computer programs need an API to talk to each other.

To be continued…

Next week I will go into more detail on API and four other acronyms to rule the web.  In the mean time, let me know what you think.  Were these definitions helpful?