On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 18:49:16 -0400, krj
wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

What the heck is the acronym kewl?

Short version:

William Gibson - The Father of Cyperpunk, started using misspellings
of similar sounding letter/word combinations. Such as kewl for cool,
Dewd for dude, etc. With the advent of "chat" rooms and IRC, it
became very common for these type of words to develop and appear.

Michael Stackpole also used similar word shadings in the "Shadow Run"
series and it caught on among the mIRC types.

One can trace these things back as far as the original railroad
telegraphers who used "shorts" to convey meanings using different
words - for instance the letter four for for combination. In Morse
(also American Telegraphy code) four appears as four dots and a dash
and the word for is .-./---/..-/.-. so if it were a text message, the
word for would be represented as ...-.

Aren't you glad you asked? :)

All the best,

Tom
--------------

"What the hell's the deal with this newsgroup...
is there a computer terminal in the day room of
some looney bin somewhere?"

Bilgeman - circa 2004