When is the last time you spelled out BTW? You 
know, "by the way"? Well, we just did. BTW, 
that felt very weird. Who spells out BTW?

BTW is just one of many Internet acronyms that 
have taken over modern lingo. But how did it 
all start?

It can be traced back all the way to 1975, when 
Stanford computer scientist Raphael Finkel 
compiled the Jargon File, also called the 
Hacker's Dictionary. Acronyms were only a small 
part of it; it contained many words that are 
common today (especially in the world of 
computers): bug, deadlock, feature, glitch, 
hack, kluge, patch... and some that didn't 
quite make it (mumblage? winnitude?).

The Jargon File has been evolving since, but 
Finkel has long left the project. After helping 
a new language to come to life, he is now 
trying to keep another language from dying:

Yiddish.