OK, I'll bite - what exactly is U of L? I know the question is semi off-topic, although it could be construed a term of address I suppose, but I wouldn't mind knowing. I mean, I went to a UL too, although in my case it was London but how would anyone know that if I just said UL? What differentiates one university's abbreviation from another? Here I think there's only one UL as the others all do it the other way round, but that can get terribly confusing too - how do you know if someone means Leeds, Loughborough, Leicester...