Paola Pascual 0:03
Welcome to Talaera talks, the business English communication podcast for non native professionals. My name is Paola and I am co hosting the show with Simon.
Simon Kennell 0:13
In this podcast, we're going to be covering communication advice and tips to help express yourself with confidence in English in professional settings. So we hope you enjoy the show.
Paola Pascual 0:24
Hello, tell your friends. This is Paola. And it's so great to be back one more Tuesday with a new Talaera Bit. I don't know if you've noticed, but I see that emails and slack messages keep getting shorter and sometimes more difficult to decipher. You know, I get it, we're all busy. And the pace of work is too fast and, and that's why we come up with strategies to streamline our tasks and speed up communication. And yeah, in an attempt to find short and simple ways of expressing something, acronyms and abbreviations were created. In this Talaera Bit, I selected the most common ones, you know, the abbreviations that you will certainly see in emails and instant messages such as slack. I'll be sharing 15 abbreviations today, but we wrote a list of over 100 You can check it out in the episode description, or go on blog.talaera.com and type in 'acronyms'.
Paola Pascual 1:29
Great. Today, I'd like to challenge you a bit. Pay attention, because I will give you the definition first. And I'd love for you to think of the business abbreviation that I am describing. Let's see how many you know. Ready? All right, let's get to it. Good. So I'll be sharing 15. But it's mostly like 14 with a variation of one of them.
Paola Pascual 1:55
The first two are related to the people to whom you send an email. The first one is the people that will be shown in the email. But you're indicating that the message doesn't go directly to them. You just want to keep them in the loop. You just want to keep them involved. Did you guess CC? See, there's one was super easy. But what about if you want to hide them? Yeah, if you want to still send them the email, but you don't want other recipients to see those people's email? What do you use? Yep, you guessed BCC. So CC, is when you want to add people include people to an email and have their emails visible to everyone else. And BCC if you want to do the same, but hide those emails from other people. Cool.
Paola Pascual 2:53
The next two have to do with deadlines. Acronym number three or abbreviation number three is what you write when you want to give a deadline. That will be before the day ends. What do you write if you want to say well, I'll have this by the end of this day or before tomorrow, right before the day ends. What would you write there? Well, here you have two options. One is EOD, which stands for end of day. Or you can also say EOB - end of business. This one is a little bit more ambiguous, because end of day means before the natural date ends. So before the night, but when you say end of business, what does that mean? Do you finish business at 4, 5, 6, 7? You know, so it can be a little bit confusing, and it can leave it open to interpretation. So yeah, number three was EOD. Or you could also say EOB.
Paola Pascual 3:55
But what if the deadline is the week? Right, the end of the week? It's very similar. What would you say? If you want to say yeah, I have this ready by the end of the week? Well, you can say I'll have it ready by EOW -end of week, EOW. Good.
Paola Pascual 4:17
What do you write, and this one is number five, what do you write when you want to mention the topic? Like I'm talking about this topic that we talked about in the past? What do you write? That is usually represented with Re: - Re: Yeah. Brilliant.
Paola Pascual 4:41
What about if you wrote a very long email and you would like to add a summary at the end to tell them okay, if you didn't have time to read all that, please look here. This is what you have to look at. This is the bottom line of what I wanted to say. I'm sure you've seen this one on Reddit and on Many other social platforms, and that is TL;DR, TL;DR. Too long; didn't read. We use this one quite a bit when we send internal emails or newsletters for our teachers where you know, we keep them in the loop with what's going on throughout the month. And there is one little blurb at the beginning that says too long didn't read. This is the quick summary, this is a just a note, please do read the rest of the email. But in case they didn't have time, at least we make sure that they got you know, the main point, the main idea. Very nice.
Paola Pascual 5:42
Now, number seven is when you write the person that you will be your primary contact. Imagine you're working with company A. And there you're talking to perhaps different people, there are different decision makers, but there will be one specific person that you will reach out to if you have any questions or if you have any suggestions. What do you write there? That will be POC, Point of Contact. Yeah, that's the primary person or primary contact that you will reach out to in a specific team or specific organization, if you want to discuss anything, POC, very nice.
Paola Pascual 6:30
What about number eight? This is what you write when you send an invite. And they need to confirm whether they will attend or not. Yeah, so you send an invite and you tell them please let me know if you will be able to make it. What is the abbreviation that you're right there. This one comes from French in it is RSVP. RSVP. And I think it sounds like something like répondez s'îl vous plaît. Please respond. Alright, were more than halfway through.
Paola Pascual 7:09
The next abbreviation, number nine, has to do with holidays or times where you're off. So if you set up, for example, an automatic email that goes out every time someone emails you while you're away on holidays, or you're not at the office, what do you say? What do people generally add to the subject line of that automatic email? Do you know? Have you ever seen OOO? Out of Office? That's exactly what you're right. I can't wait to write that in an automatic email myself to have that oh, oh, out of office. I'm sorry. I'll be back next week. But at the moment, I'm OOO, I'm out of office. Yeah, I'm not working.
Paola Pascual 7:57
What if you want to specify that that time you're off is because you're having paid holidays? But your company? What do you say here? Or you can also request that paid time off to your company? What is the abbreviation that will you will use or if you said PTO, then you were right. PTO is what we write to refer to paid time off. It's the kind of days that you have off, but they're also paid for, you know, be paid by your company.
Paola Pascual 8:34
And the last chunk, the last four are quite informal. So try to avoid them in formal emails, like to clients or, you know, any, perhaps the CEO of the company, you can still use them in Slack messages or quick emails to close, close colleagues or, you know, if you want to text some friends, that works as well. They're not very professional, but I have seen them and today's business environment. So the first one is when you just want to and the first one of this blog, but this is number 11. So number 11 is the abbreviation that you write when you just want to inform the other person, but you don't expect a reply. You don't expect a response. You just tell them. Okay, this is just information that I wanted to pass on. That's it. If you said FYI for your information, then you got it. Yeah, FYI, I won't be working tomorrow. I will be on PTO. Yeah, remember the previous one paid time off?
Paola Pascual 9:39
Brilliant. What if you want to give your opinion? Yeah, so you're having a conversation? And a colleague says, Well, I'm not sure if this is going to work. And you just want to say, well, you know, in my opinion, this is what we should do instead. And that is exactly that, in my opinion. IMO, IMO, in my opinion. Let's say you want to ask someone to give you some information. For example, please tell me if you're available for a quick call. Please tell me. Yeah. What would you say there? Or please let me know. What is the abbreviation for that? Let me know. Yeah, would be LMK, LMK, Let me know. And the very last one, you're having a quick conversation, and then you want to bring up a topic usually quickly, that it's not fully related to the topic you were talking about? Yeah, it's almost like, oh, one more thing. Or, Oh, this is a quick thing that I wanted to share with you. We say, by the way, and what's the abbreviation of by the way? Super easy. BTW.
Paola Pascual 10:59
All right. Those were the 14 almost like 15 abbreviations that I wanted to share with you, CC and BCC for emails for the recipients, EOD, or EOB for end of day or end of business, EOW end of week, Re: for a topic. If it's too long, didn't read that means you want to add a summary to your message that is TL;DR. Your point of contact would be your POC. If you send an email and you would like a response here, whether they will attend or not. You add RSVP, you're out of office, you'll write OOO. And I hope you can have a lot of PTO this year, paid time off. And the four information was FYI. Yeah. For your information. IMO, in my opinion, LMK. let me know, and BTW, by the way. All right.
Paola Pascual 12:14
I hope this list helps you understand abbreviations a tiny bit better. Just remember don't overuse them. And remember that analogy that Simon shared about idioms. The same applies to abbreviations. They are like food seasoning. If you add a bit, your meal will be very tasty, but if you add too much, you will spoil it. Just remember that and check out the full list of business acronyms on our blog. And as you know, you can always find the link in the description or go on blog.tilera.com and type in acronyms. Alright, have a wonderful day. And as always, keep learning.
Paola Pascual 12:59
And that's all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember to subscribe to Talaera talks. We'll be back soon with more
Simon Kennell 13:07
and visit our website at talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning!
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