Abstract Nowadays, innovation and application of new abbreviations is highly and rapidly represented on a large scale. The current study introduces various shortening processes such as clipping, abbreviation, backformation, acronym and blending and then, assesses them in web chats and determines their level of application. Based on different conducted researches, Persian internet users apply different shortening methods when they are chatting online, for instance using the shortened names of cities and countries, stereotypes, emoticons, shortened sentences, English abbreviations, numbers and also shortening the shortened vocabularies. Using abbreviations is the most common method of all these seven, and acronym process has the most productivity of all. Owing to the fact that if word-formation process is active in a language, borrowing will happen rarely; therefore, each language needs to take advantage of shortening processes espicially acronyms.

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