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Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual media, its pronunciation varies; "fack", "faak", "fax", and "facts" are commonly heard.^{[citation needed]} Depending on usage, the term may refer specifically to a single frequently asked question, or to an assembled list of many questions and their answers.

Origins[link]

While the name may be recent, the FAQ format itself is quite old. For instance, Matthew Hopkins wrote The Discovery of Witches in 1647 as a list of questions and answers, introduced as "Certaine Queries answered". Many old catechisms are in a question-and-answer (Q&A) format. Summa Theologica, written by Thomas Aquinas in the second half of the 13th century, is a series of common questions about Christianity to which he wrote a series of replies.

The "FAQ" is an Internet textual tradition originating from the technical limitations of early mailing lists, within NASA in the early 1980s. The first FAQ developed over several pre-Web years starting from 1982 when storage was expensive. On NASA's SPACE mailing list, the presumption was that new users would download archived past messages through ftp. In practice, this rarely happened and the users tended to post questions to the mailing list instead of searching its archives. Repeating the "right" answers becomes tedious, and went against developing netiquette. A series of different measures were set up by loosely affiliated groups of computer system administrators, from regularly posted messages to netlib-like query email daemons. The acronym FAQ was developed in 1983 by Eugene Miya of NASA for the SPACE mailing list.^[1] The format was then picked up on other mailing lists. Posting frequency changed to monthly, and finally weekly and daily across a variety of mailing lists and newsgroups. The first person to post a weekly FAQ was Jef Poskanzer to the Usenet net.graphics/comp.graphics newsgroups. Eugene Miya experimented with the first daily FAQ.

Meanwhile on Usenet, Mark Horton had started a series of "Periodic Posts" (PP) which attempted to answer trivial questions with appropriate answers. Periodic summary messages posted to Usenet newsgroups attempted to reduce the continual reposting of the same basic questions and associated wrong answers. On Usenet, posting questions which are covered in a group's FAQ came to be considered poor netiquette, as it showed that the poster has not done the expected background reading before asking others to provide answers. Some groups may have multiple FAQ on related topics, or even two or more competing FAQ explaining a topic from different points of view.

Another factor on early ARPANET mailing lists was netiquette, wherein people asking questions typically "promised to 'summarize' received answers." These summaries were usually simple concatenations of received replies with little to no quality checking.

The initialism "FAQ" possibly started as a contrived three-letter abbreviation with an auditory similarity to the word "facts" (i.e., a statement "check the FAQs" echoes "check the facts".)^{[citation needed]}

Modern developments[link]

Originally the term FAQ referred to the Frequently Answered Question itself, and the compilation of questions and answers was known as a FAQ list or some similar expression. Today FAQ is more frequently used to refer to the list, and a text consisting of questions and their answers is often called a FAQ regardless of whether the questions are actually frequently asked, if they are asked at all.

In some cases informative documents not in the traditional FAQ style have also been described as FAQs, particularly the videogame FAQ, which is often a detailed descriptions of gameplay, including tips, secrets, and beginning-to-end guidance. Rarely are videogame FAQs in a question-and-answer format, although they may contain a short section of questions and answers.^{[citation needed]}

Over time, the accumulated FAQs across all USENET news groups sparked the creation of the "*.answers" moderated newsgroups such as comp.answers, misc.answers and sci.answers for crossposting and collecting FAQ across respective comp.*, misc.*, sci.* newsgroups.

The term FAQ, and the idea behind it, has spread offline as well, to the point where paper instructions for products may contain a FAQ.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

1. ^ Hersch, Russ. FAQs about FAQs. 8 January 1998.

• Livinginternet.com

External links[link]

• Original USENET examples
• FAQ definition, Jargon File
• Usenet FAQ Archives

David Nicholas O'Doherty (born 18 December 1975 in Dublin, Ireland)^[1] is a Perrier Award winning Irish stand-up comedian, author, musician, actor and playwright. His stand-up has won two awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, Best Newcomer first of all and the if.comedy award in 2008 for his show Let's Comedy.^[2] He has been nominated twice more for his work at the festival. O'Doherty has also written a children's book, composed two plays and released two comedy CDs, the first of which Giggle Me Timbers (Jokes Ahoy) was recorded at his home in front of 35 people. O'Doherty's second more recent CD release called Let's David O'Doherty was recorded in Whelans of Dublin and released in December 2009. His television series The Modest Adventures of David O'Doherty was broadcast on RTÉ Television in 2007. In 2006 he claimed that it took him "about three years to get a decent hour together and seven years to achieve this level of fame where (he is) the number three ranked person called David O'Doherty on Google".^[3]

Style[link]

O'Doherty is well known for combining his comedic performance with tunes played on his miniature electronic keyboard. O'Doherty describes his own style of comedy in his song "FAQ for the DOD" as "very low energy musical whimsy" - or "VLEMWy," for short. This is an accurate summary as he delivers both his sung and spoken jokes with an extremely dry sarcasm. Most of his songs focus on unusual topics such as angry mathematicians, finding love (Orange) and advice on how to dislodge a badger from one's leg.^[4]

Comedic career[link]

O'Doherty worked in telemarketing and temping before he made his first stage appearance at Dublin's Comedy Cellar in 1998.^[5] His first full show was The Story of the Boy Who Saved Comedy which received a nomination for Perrier Best Newcomer when it was performed at Edinburgh Fringe. In 2006, he was nominated for an if.comedy award for his Edinburgh show, David O'Doherty Is My Name. O'Doherty has performed at festivals across the world in locations that include Melbourne, Montreal, New York and Wellington. He has toured Ireland with Tommy Tiernan, the United Kingdom with Rich Hall and the United States with Demetri Martin.^[6] His CD, Giggle Me Timbers (Jokes Ahoy!), was released on 21 December 2006 on Trust Me I'm A Thief Records ^[7] He performs an annual show at UCD's Freshers Week.^[8]

In August 2008, O'Doherty won the If.comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe for his show Let's Comedy, which featured "a relationship in text messages, tunes played on a 3ft keyboard, and a badger attack".^[9] He was presented with the 2008 Intelligent Finance Comedy Award^[10] and a cheque for £8,000 (€10,000)^[11] by the previous winner Brendon Burns and the Australian author and television presenter Clive James. After his win O'Doherty returned to Ireland to perform at Electric Picnic 2008 and an October show at Vicar Street.^[12] In October and November 2008, O'Doherty toured Canada as part of the Just For Laughs Comedy Tour.^[13]

In May 2010, O'Doherty supported Flight of the Conchords for their sold out shows in the Olympia Theatre, Dublin.

Edinburgh Fringe shows[link]

Awards and nominations for stand-up comedy[link]

O'Doherty has been decorated with numerous awards for his achievements in comedy. In 1999, he won the Channel 4 So You Think You're Funny Comedy Competition at the Edinburgh Fringe and was also a finalist in the BBC New Comedy Awards in the same year.^[14] He has received the accolade of Hot Press Irish Comedian of the Year 2003.^{[citation needed]} O'Doherty's other achievements at the Edinburgh Fringe include two nominations (2000, 2006) and a win (2008). In 2000, he was nominated for Perrier Best Newcomer Award for his show, David O'Doherty: The Boy Who Saved Comedy^{[citation needed]} followed in 2006 by a nomination for The if.comeddie award for his show, David O'Doherty is My Name^{[citation needed]} He eventually won the if.comedy Award (formerly the Perrier Award) in 2008 for Let's Comedy.^[15] He was also nominated for the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2006.^[16]

Television career[link]

In May 2007, O'Doherty's first TV series, The Modest Adventures of David O'Doherty, began airing on RTÉ Two. The six-part series was directed by John Carney, following the completion of his Academy Award-winning film Once.^[17] The premise of each episode was to have the comedian attempt to achieve a goal which he set for himself. The show features O'Doherty, his neighbour Bryan, and his friend Maeve Higgins. A running gag in the show is a reference to road racing cyclist Stephen Roche.

O'Doherty appeared on Comedy Live Presents: Russell Brand and Friends shown on Channel 4 on 25 January 2008.

On 18 November 2010, O'Doherty presented episode 5 of the 24th series of BBC2 music quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks. He also wrote and presented the end-of-series compilation. O'Doherty had previously appeared on the show three times as a panellist.

In January 2011 he also hosted the 'Best of Series 24" Never Mind The Buzzcocks.^[19]

Radio appearances[link]

O'Doherty appeared on The Jon Richardson Show on BBC 6 Music on 23 November 2008 and on 8 November 2009.

Literary career[link]

O'Doherty has written widely for newspapers and magazines and also has two plays, two books and a radio series to his name. His debut book was a children's book entitled Ronan Long Gets It Wrong, written in 2001. It was illustrated by David Roberts and published by Mammoth Storybooks.^[20] His first play is entitled Saddled and was written with Bryan Quinn. It was claimed as "the world's first theatrical production to feature live repair of audience members' bicycles". In 2008, he and fellow Irish comedian Maeve Higgins performed "I Can't Sleep", a play recommended for children aged 5–8. This was O'Doherty's first play for children. The play, which involved the audience entering the theatre to find both performers asleep in separate beds, was performed in both Dublin and Edinburgh.^[21] He has also written a series for RTÉ Radio about bee detectives with his brother Mark, entitled The Bees of Manulla. O'Doherty recently released a book detailing 100 false facts about pandas called '100 Facts About Pandas' which is 100 false facts about pandas. He followed this up with '100 facts about Sharks' which is 100 false facts about sharks.

Filmography[link]

In 2008, O'Doherty starred alongside comedian Dylan Moran, Keith Allen and Neil Jordan in A Film With Me In It, a cinematic release written by and starring his brother Mark Doherty.^[22]

Discography[link]

O'Doherty also recorded a live album in Whelan's ^[23] which was released on CD through Comedyshop.ie and Road Records in December 2009. It's called Let's David O'Doherty ^[24]

Year	Title	Peak chart position
2007	"Orange"	#30
2009	[1] Let's David O'Doherty CD

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: David O'Doherty

• Official site
• David O'Doherty on Myspace
• David O'Doherty at the Internet Movie Database
• Modest Adventures at RTÉ
• RTÉ press release

Chortle reviews

1. David O'Doherty The Boy Who Saved Comedy
2. David O'Doherty: Small Things
3. David O'Doherty Creates Something New Under The Sun
4. David O'Doherty in World Champion Of Some Things
5. David O'Doherty: Grown Up
6. David O'Doherty Is My Name