As far as question #2 goes, that's only for mIRC. I use BitchX (linux) and ircle (mac), which both use colors, but I have no idea how to use them. Since colors show up differently on different systems and with different characters, they can get kind of annoying, at least to me.
My personal favorite acronym, which was put together years ago..
roflmaowtimeapimp - rolling on the floor laughing my a** off with tears in my eyes and peeing in my pants. But that's not used much
And there's other random acronyms that pop up that relate to story names.. sometimes with this, you just have to ask
