About RTFM

RTFM is an initialism for “Read The Fucking Manual.”

One of the earlies known instances of RTFM in print was in the Table of Contents of the 1979 LINPACK Users’ Guide; the manual for using the LINPACK linear algebra software library written for Fortran programming language.
The text appears as a quote, attributed to Anonymous.

Table of Contents
“R.T.F.M.” —Anonymous

PREFACE ……………………………………………………..v
INTRODUCTION
1.Overview……………………………………1.1
2.Usage…………………………………………1.2
…

• RFTM on UrbanDictionary

Related Terms:

R.T.F.A.

RTFA is an initialism for “Read The Fucking Article,” popular on Fark, Digg, and other social news aggregates.

One of the eariest known instances of RTFA that appears on the web is in the comments section from a Slashdot post on September 8th, 2000, from user PurpleBlob:

Okay. There’s a really cool thing you can do to help clear up this “vague assertion”. It’s called… RTFA [lycos.com].

People shouldn’t have to repeat information from the article for your convenience.

One of the first known instances of RTFA on Fark occurred on August 20th, 2003, in a post by user Obi-Juan

Damn that’s a good headline!

/hasn’t RTFA

• RTFA on UrbanDictionary.

L.M.G.T.F.Y.

“Let Me Google That For You”

LMGTFY.com was registered in November of 2008, and allows users to provide an idiot-proof method for training people to look things up for themselves.

Usage:
Person 1 asks a question that could easily be answered by simply Googling for it.

How do we know that Fox News isn’t fair and balanced?

Person 2 replies by pasting a link created with lmgtfy.com.

Let me google that for you.

• TL;DR is the antithesis of RTFM and RTFA.
• In the absense of a Manual, one may be advised to Lurk Moar.