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The prestigious collective that monitors the state of the French language, the Académie française, has issued a warning decree against LOL and the French version, MDR, which stands for mort de rire, or dying of laughter.

In a bulletin on the matter, Les immortels (the Immortals, the people in charge of the Académie) wrote:

The Académie française recommends indeed the use of developed expressions instead of initials [and] abbreviations when equivalents exist.

The Immortals hope that with this fair call to linguistic reason, French speakers will carefully spell out any phrases that indicate uproarious giggles or thoughtless punctuation to a dead-end conversation. Big MDRz to that.