Abbreviations in Trigger Warnings?

[ReanaZ]

I don't really remember seeing this before this week (it's possible it's happened before and I didn't notice--I'm feeling pretty emotionally fragile this week and thus paying closer attention to trigger warnings), but there have been several posts with trigger-warnings in the subject line and first paragraph, except they were abbreviated to be just the first letters (EM, SA, SH, MH, etc.) and... I have no idea what that means. I mean, once I got into the article, I could kind of puzzle some of them out, but that kind of defeated the purpose. (For example, I didn't immediate connect "rape" trigger warning with "SA" (sexual assault), which was a topic I was trying to avoid this weekend.)

How do people feel about either a blanket policy of not abbreviating trigger descriptions OR a common list of abbreviations okay to use, with definitions?

[Adelene]

Yes please.

[Old Dan Tucker]

100% agreed.

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My name is Old Dan Tucker, and I am a 30ish ladyperson. You can call me just plain Tucker if you like.

[CodaSammy]

As a user, 100% agreed. And it's an excellent point, and one I'm kicking myself for not thinking of. Thanks for the input! I'll take it to the team.

[RollingHead]

Just popping in to n-th this suggestion, as I am terrible with acronyms.

[kathlynn]

Any problem if we do something like "the main character (MC) walked down the road. Where was the MC going?"
Some times I prefer to abbreviate things, especially things like "SA" because the word has emotional connections that the abbreviation doesn't have. Though I certainly understand how it can get confusing.

[CodaSammy]

Kathlynn, I personally would be ok with that as long as it was done in each post, not just once at the start of a thread. Others may have different feelings about it though.

[ReanaZ]

Yeah, Kathlynn, I definitely don't have a problem with using abbreviations themselves; I just think we need a way to make sure that people who are reading the trigger warnings can clearly understand what the abbreviation means without having to read triggering content in order to understand, which in that example would mean what CodaSammy pointed out--that construction would have to be in every single post that uses abbreviations.

The word rape does have strong negative emotional connections for me, but I would much rather read it than "SA", not make the connection, and end up reading a graphic description I'm not in the headspace to handle. (Also, how I respond to the word alone is a pretty good flag for me to whether I can handle more descriptive triggering content.)

But I know not everyone feels this way--I'm not as fond of the idea of an "approved abbreviations dictionary" I would have to check but it seems to be a good compromise with folks who don't even like the triggery words themselves.

[Logical Timber]

I've seen people use [same warning as above] when they have the same trigger several times in a post, which I thought was effective.