A FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions, hence the TLA. (TLA stands for Three-Letter Acronym. Those who worked in the government since FDR (our first true TLA president) will have no problem with this.)

If you get told to read the FAQ after you've read it, you should do several things. The first would be to verify that you actually read the FAQ on the topic being discussed. If you read the FAQ for the interior design newsgroup, it won't do you any good when posting to alt.2600.no.mercy.for.the.weak.or.those.who.don't.read.FAQs. The next thing to do if you actually did read the correct FAQ is to re-read it. If you were drunk, stoned, going through a divorce, comatose, working, or otherwise distracted while you were reading it, try re-reading it under different conditions more conducive to learning. Tiny warrens in Benedictine monasteries, for instance, are great places to read FAQs (at least until they throw one of their all-night Gregorian chant raves...).

The good news is that you've moved up the food chain. You see, FAQs contain mostly beginning information for the uninitiated. Once you've read the FAQ, you won't ask those basic questions (so the theory goes). Unfortunately, not all there is to know on a subject is contained in a mere FAQ.

The person telling you to RTFM is directing you to strive harder and attain a higher plateau of awareness by seeking out the font of eternal wisdom: the manual. This is either the book or help file on the CD (that you can print out into a book, passing the printing costs on to you, the consumer) that came with the product you're messing with. RTFM itself stands for Read The Freaking Manual (Beavis and Butthead aficionados out there will no doubt make a clever substitution. Shame on you potty thinkers!).

As a side note, if you post to a philisophical or comparative religion newsgroup or mailing list, you can really start off some fireworks with a RTFM comment. The definitive tomes for those groups, shall we say, are not yet, uh, widely-accepted standards. ("You think the Upanishads are the manual? Try the Tibetan Book of the Dead, you moron.")("Moron? Who you callin' a moron, you infidel unclean?!?!?") Try it, have fun, and see for yourself.

To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any multimedia FAQs out there. There is, however, a source of help for those who can't read: it's called school. They have all kinds out there. I would recommend your associate give one a try. If your associate is actually a boss, on the other hand, I would instead suggest you either offer to read everything for him (if you want to stay his employee) or mention this to his boss if you stand in line to get his job when he moves on.

Fine as these books may be, they only go so far. For basic information, they are great resources. They do not replace the FAQ in terms of autoritativeness, much as the FAQ cannot replace the manual, which in turn is a cut beneath "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt." Read the FAQ no matter how many "Drooling Neanderthals" books you may have read.

No, ma'am.

That's facts, ma'am.

Just the facts.

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