Acronyms
I’m not going to mention any acronyms by name – that would only mean that they have won.
The principle of the acronym is relatively sound. Make a new word from the initial letters of a commonly used term. It saves time and you can also marvel at the outrageous fortune whereby these initial letters form something pronounceable rather than a casualty from the Russian dictionary. Unfortunately, the world has gone acronym mad.
These days there are a number of ways in which an acronym can be tainted by its creator. They can name an organisation or activity specifically to create an acronym. This is unforgivable as the organisation’s proper name is so unwieldy and non-descriptive that only the acronym is used.
Another technique in creating a catchy acronym is to bend the rules and sometimes use the first two or three letters of one of the words in the term instead of merely the initial letter. Well I’m sorry, but there is no bending of the rules here – just breaking them. If it’s not just initial letters, it’s not an acronym. Get out and take your pathetic excuse for an abbreviation with you.
The other factor counting against acronyms is their ubiquity. Every tin-pot three-membered organisation or society has an acronymical name for a start, but within each of these, every action, every policy, every job has been given some ludicrous upper-case title. Never mind that nobody understands it and what it actually stands for has been lost in the dark pages of the grim spiral-bound rulebook. Whenever these organisations are forced to communicate with the real world, they litter communication with these abbreviations as if they’re real words and treat you like a half-wit for not recognising them or remembering all ten thousand of them.
I read an article in the paper the other day where a borough council member turned the titles of every council report into an acronym. These are reports with titles like: ‘External investigation into traffic-flow to and from Whateley Road.’ This kind of thing makes a bad acronym in the first place, but worse than that, he listed a series of reports while making a point, all of them in the form of acronyms, not one of them explained. I don’t work for the council. How do I know what they are? I was less than convinced, so I have written him a letter countering his assertions, citing a number of fictitious reports produced using a random letter generator. As far as anyone outside the council is concerned, my argument is equally as strong as his.
The principle of the acronym is relatively sound. Make a new word from the initial letters of a commonly used term. It saves time and you can also marvel at the outrageous fortune whereby these initial letters form something pronounceable rather than a casualty from the Russian dictionary. Unfortunately, the world has gone acronym mad.
These days there are a number of ways in which an acronym can be tainted by its creator. They can name an organisation or activity specifically to create an acronym. This is unforgivable as the organisation’s proper name is so unwieldy and non-descriptive that only the acronym is used.
Another technique in creating a catchy acronym is to bend the rules and sometimes use the first two or three letters of one of the words in the term instead of merely the initial letter. Well I’m sorry, but there is no bending of the rules here – just breaking them. If it’s not just initial letters, it’s not an acronym. Get out and take your pathetic excuse for an abbreviation with you.
The other factor counting against acronyms is their ubiquity. Every tin-pot three-membered organisation or society has an acronymical name for a start, but within each of these, every action, every policy, every job has been given some ludicrous upper-case title. Never mind that nobody understands it and what it actually stands for has been lost in the dark pages of the grim spiral-bound rulebook. Whenever these organisations are forced to communicate with the real world, they litter communication with these abbreviations as if they’re real words and treat you like a half-wit for not recognising them or remembering all ten thousand of them.
I read an article in the paper the other day where a borough council member turned the titles of every council report into an acronym. These are reports with titles like: ‘External investigation into traffic-flow to and from Whateley Road.’ This kind of thing makes a bad acronym in the first place, but worse than that, he listed a series of reports while making a point, all of them in the form of acronyms, not one of them explained. I don’t work for the council. How do I know what they are? I was less than convinced, so I have written him a letter countering his assertions, citing a number of fictitious reports produced using a random letter generator. As far as anyone outside the council is concerned, my argument is equally as strong as his.
posted by Blue and Brown | 12:58 AM
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