Written Non-Utterance
As our written word actually becomes less fluent than its accompanying conversational form, “lol” has actually become an unspoken non-utterance, akin to “um” or even the somewhat retrograde “like.”
We have even destroyed its representative acronym-ship, with what I would estimate as the vast majority of its usage accompanying events not involving laughter, especially “out loud.”
I propose two alternatives:
- “haha,” which brings in the laughter motif without implying a full-out belly-laugh, especially out loud.
- “CIC,” a new acronym pronounced “kick,” which stands for “chuckle in cranium.”