Personal advertisement
A personal or personal ad is an item or notice traditionally in the newspaper, similar to a classified ad but personal [disambiguation needed 
] in nature. In British English it is also commonly known as an advert in a lonely hearts column.[1] With its rise in popularity, the World Wide Web has also become a common medium for personals, commonly referred to as online dating. Personals are generally meant to generate romance, friendship, or casual (sometimes sexual) encounters, and usually include a basic description of the person posting it, and their interests.
Due to newspaper prices being based on characters or lines of text, a jargon of abbreviations, acronyms and code words arose in personals, and have carried over to the internet.
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[edit] List of single-letter abbreviations
The following are examples of single-letter abbreviations used in three-letter acronyms (TLAs).
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The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (December 2010) |
[edit] First letter
The first letter describes the person seeking.
- D: Divorced
- F: Female
- G: Gay
- M: Male (or Man)
- M: Married
- S: Single
- T: Transgender
- W: Woman or Widower
[edit] Middle letter
The middle letter represents the ethnicity of the person posting the ad. Can be replaced by 4, standing for for ("seeking", "desires", etc.).
[edit] Last letter
- C: Couple
- F: Female
- M: Male (or Man)
- T: Transgender
- W: Woman
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- http://www.stargazers.com/abbrevad.html
- http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/
- http://www.1-true-love.com/datingtips/abbr.shtml
- http://www.all-acronyms.com/?tg=personals&o=a
[edit] Further reading
- Francesca Beauman, Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Ad 1695-2010, Chatto & Windus, 2011
