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OMG! Seriously, I had to LOL recently when I heard a radio report that in North Carolina the state Division of Motor Vehicles was offering to replace license plates that begin with the letters WTF.

The state was reacting to complaints that the three letters are shorthand for a vulgar expression that is commonly used in e-mail and text messages.

YGBK, I thought in text-speak. But I found the news article online, so it must be true (like everything on the Internet).

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Banned license plate combinations, words and numbers alike, are common in every state (and in other countries), for obvious reasons. So-called vanity plates, with their infinite and intricate combinations, need special vigilance.

The problem is, how do the bureaucrats keep up with the ever-changing American idiom? Isn’t North Carolina overreacting a bit?

I know, some of you are thinking, “GOI.” But if you start with WTF, where does it end? Try it yourself. Look at any of the license plates in your parking lot at work or on your street (not while you’re driving, please), and see if you can’t come up with phrases that could be objectionable to some people.

My own license plate begins with VFE. I remember it by thinking Very Fine Editor. But what else could a clever mind do with that? And do I really want to know? A colleague in the office notes that when she was issued a new license plate that begins with UBG, the clerk said, “Oh look — You Bad Girl.”

Research is always called for these days, so I Googled “banned license plates.” I was flabbergasted. The ethersphere devoted to the topic is staggering.

The Washington state Department of Licensing (http://www.dol.wa.gov/vehicleregistration/licenseplates.html) has its own rules for personalized plates. They cannot:

• Contain unusual characters (#, %, &, @, +, !, etc.);

• Contain invalid letter and number combinations (there is a long list of these on the DOT Web site);

• Or suggest vulgar, racial, ethnic or indecent messages.

If there is a public list of banned combinations, I couldn’t find it. But a 2007 article that I found from the Seattle Times, whose main topic was the DOL’s decision to begin making seven-character Washington state license plates in 2009, also referred to the state’s system for banning certain plate combinations.

According to the Times article, the state keeps a list of more than 2,400 objectionable combinations. “The list includes profane groupings beginning with ‘F,’ but also combinations such as: APE, BRA, BUT, CAT, DOG, DDT, KID, MOM, MUD, PET, RAT, RYE, TUB, TWO, WIG, YES and ZOO,” the article notes. HOE was added to the no-no list after complaints, the article says.

Some other combinations have been un-banned, the article continued, including APA, BAK, AUE, BUG, CHP, EAK, EEK, EEW, END, FAN, FUN and GPU.

Further Googling turned up a Web site, http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm, with a huge list of chat acronyms and text message shortland. (WTF is on the list, BTW, and you can look it up there since this is a family newspaper.) I’m sure that even the several hundred entries aren’t an exhaustive compilation.

More than a few seemingly innocuous letter combinations that you might see on a license plate turn out to have edgy counterparts on the netlingo list. I suspect some of them are on Washington’s list. Others are just plain funny (IPN, for instance).

I’m PC enough to understand that we need to avoid offense. I also think that perhaps we need to lighten up just a bit.

C4N, and TFLMS.

• Don Nelson is editor of the Skagit Valley Herald. He can be reached at 360-416-2137 or .

Glossary
OMG: Oh my gosh
LOL: Laugh out loud
YGBK: You’ve gotta be kidding
GOI: Get over it
BTW: By the way
IPN: I’m posting naked
PC: Politically correct
C4N: Ciao for now
TFLMS: Thanks for letting me share