On 10/1/2010 12:17 AM, Chris Knadle wrote:
On Thu, September 30, 2010 11:32 pm, [email protected] wrote:
You see I'm not a current geek. I'm a declared newbie who thinks of
SSD as Social Security Disability.
Ah. Yeah, acronym re-use is a problem. The big joke when I was working
in certain Engineering circles was "oh, you belong to the UAA." Someone
would ask "UAA?" Answer: "Use All Acronyms."
And remember, Dilbert is a member of the SEWLTUIFE.
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=like+to+use+initials&x=0&y=0
Unfortunately, acronyms eventually "become the thing" rather than standing
for a thing.
That's not a bad thing in and of itself. Think of sonar, radar, maser,
laser, etc. as acronyms that eventually became normal words. The
language grows. I'm sure only a small fraction of the general population
could tell you what the original acronyms stood for. Then you have
initialisms such as RAM, ROM, etc. which may become acronyms in time,
and then on to words. Where an initialism is not a pronounceable word
(e.g., SSD), it will likely always remain capitalized and spelled out
letter by letter.
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