threadID=1301503is the current "School of War" thread - jump back to the start of the thread and check out the links to the previous school of wars as well, for more discussion than you can shake a stick at.
Conventionally the location acronyms people use for talking are the first three letters, except where that would result in ambiguity. :-) (e.g. Nth/Nwg/Nwy, instead of Nor/Nor/Nor.) But really, any old acronym that isn't ambiguous is probably fine.
Coasts are often specified as /nc /ec /sc or (nc) (ec) (sc)
There's also F = Fleet, A = Army, S = Support, M = Move, C = Convoy, H = Hold, and sometimes - = Move.
e.g.:
F Nth C A Yor - Bel
A Yor M Bel
A Pic S A Yor - Bel
A Bre S A Pic H
F MAO - Spa/sc
That's not how you enter orders on web dip, of course, but one of the PBEM adjudicators uses that format, and it's fairly common in face to face play I think, so people do chat using it. Often people leave out the unit type designations, since it's not actually ambiguous since only one unit can occupy a province at a time.
Also if you want to practice at the strategic/tactical part without having to add the complexity of talking to people, "No in-game messaging" (gunboat/nopress) games can be quite good for that. You still have to consider what the other players are trying to communicate using their orders and what they're doing - that's still a fundamentally important part of the game, but it removes a layer of complexity and games can often progress faster since there's no need to actually go around the loop of chatting.