Patrick:
However, for people who do like to split hairs, I'd take this one step
further and say: does WORD imply pronouncability? Discuss...
er.. pronouncability?
Apparently under US law it is completely acceptable for a name to be spelt
Brown yet pronounced Smith.
Generally speaking acronyms and initialised abbreviations are slowly becoming
synonymous.
English is a living language and as such words may change meaning with time.
For example gay.
But enough of the pedantry.
;)
mike 2k:)2
Mike Foskett
Web Standards, Accessibility Testing Consultant
Multimedia Publishing and Production
British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta)
Milburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry CV4 7JJ
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel: 02476 416994 Ext 3342 [Tuesday - Thursday]
Fax: 02476 411410
www.becta.org.uk
-Original Message-
From: Patrick Lauke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 17 March 2005 11:45
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] acronym and abbr and worms
russ - maxdesign
Acronyms
--
Acronyms are a subset of abbreviations, as they are still
shortened words.
However, they are more specific. An acronym is defined as a
WORD formed from
the initial letters of a multi-word name. The important point
here is that
an acronym must be a WORD - this means that the joined
initial letters must
be able to be pronounced.
And this is where the worms usually are...the requirement for pronouncability
of the formed word. Certain developers (me included, I'm afraid) don't see this
as a main sticking point, and would put initialisms into acronym, rather than
abbreviation.
We *could* start debating this again, but because:
- acronyms are abbreviations, and therefore initialisms marked up as acronyms
are therefore still abbreviations
- the distinction of acronm and abbreviation is removed in XHTML2.0 (yes, I
know...in 2021 when we'll finally be using it)
- no current semantic tool makes any hard distinction between them
I'd say it becomes an exercise in splitting hairs. The main key is
consistency: whether you think initialisms are acronyms or abbreviations,
choose a camp and stick with it. If, for instance, you consistently mark up
HTML as acronym title=HyperText Markup LanguageHTML/acronym on all your
pages, and later find out that you were wrong (once the gods of semantics
appear to you in a dream, or something), you can still do a site-wide replace
for it (or, heck, use XSLT to transform all your XHTML, whatever).
However, for people who do like to split hairs, I'd take this one step further
and say: does WORD imply pronouncability? Discuss...
Patrick
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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