Personal advertisement

A personal or personal ad is an item or notice traditionally in the newspaper, similar to a classified ad but in nature. In British English it is also commonly known as an advert in a lonely hearts column. 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.

List of single-letter abbreviations

The following are examples of single-letter abbreviations used in three-letter acronyms (TLAs).

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

Middle letter

The middle letter represents...
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