The topic of this week’s post is certain forms of verbal and written shorthand: acronyms, abbreviations, and even, briefly, texting and email “language.”
Ms. Picky cannot think of acronyms without remembering a certain life insurance salesman she once met. It was apparently Mr. Eugene G. Gump’s life tragedy that his parents had had the poor judgment to choose such an unfortunate name for their son—and that he himself had had the poor judgment to wear a tie clip with his initials on it.
Ms. Picky remembers how Mr. Gump’s colleague took pleasure in telling him, with a snicker and a poke, that he had egg on his tie, and how Gump responded with a long-suffering smile that indicated that the game was not new to him.
But some acronyms can be more obscure. Ms. Picky confesses that few things annoy her as much as being expected to be familiar with the pronunciation and meaning of obfuscatory combinations of letters with which she has had no previous acquaintance.
What annoys her even more, is discovering—when she hears other people complain about the increasing use of “acronyms”—that they are not talking about acronyms at all, but, rather, about abbreviations.
Ms. Picky cannot think of acronyms without remembering a certain life insurance salesman she once met. It was apparently Mr. Eugene G. Gump’s life tragedy that his parents had had the poor judgment to choose such an unfortunate name for their son—and that he himself had had the poor judgment to wear a tie clip with his initials on it.
Ms. Picky remembers how Mr. Gump’s colleague took pleasure in telling him, with a snicker and a poke, that he had egg on his tie, and how Gump responded with a long-suffering smile that indicated that the game was not new to him.
But some acronyms can be more obscure. Ms. Picky confesses that few things annoy her as much as being expected to be familiar with the pronunciation and meaning of obfuscatory combinations of letters with which she has had no previous acquaintance.
What annoys her even more, is discovering—when she hears other people complain about the increasing use of “acronyms”—that they are not talking about acronyms at all, but, rather, about abbreviations.
If you don’t know the difference between acronyms and abbreviations, the examples below should help to clear things up.
There is also a third category of shorthand—email and texting language—that, so far (OMG*), deserves only a peripheral place in a discussion of English language, but that—unless one is certain that the person one is emailing or texting is familiar with the particular shorthand—is vastly overdone.
Everyone knows a few standards—like the adolescents’ BFF (Best Friends Forever)—but Ms. Picky dislikes being confounded by the likes of “CMIIW” [Correct Me If I’m Wrong] or “HHIS” [Head Hanging In Shame]. It is inconsiderate of a writer to send an email message that one might read in five seconds—but that one must spend five minutes Googling in order to decipher.
Now, on to the business of the day. . . .
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*Oh My God.
Acronyms
Acronyms are phrases or words that have been shortened to initial letters and that, when spoken aloud, are pronounced as a word, rather than as individual letters:
AWOL (AY-wahl). Absent Without Official Leave.
CAT scan. Computerized Axial Tomography.
GIGO (GEE-go). Garbage In, Garbage Out (The integrity of an output is dependent on the integrity of the input).
LASER. Light Amplification (by the) Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
NASDAQ. National Association (of) Securities Dealers Automated Quotations.
PET scan. Positron Emission Tomography.
RADAR. RAdio Detection And Ranging.
REIT [reet]. Real Estate Investment Trust.
Scuba [first initial capitalization only]. Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.
SWAT. Special Weapons And Tactics.
ZIP code. Zone Improvement Plan code.
Abbreviations
A
APR. Annual Percentage Rate.
DB (pension plan). Defined Benefit.
DC (pension plan). Defined Contribution.
GO (bond). General Obligation.
NPO. Nihil per orem, or “nothing by mouth” (medical instruction).
NYPD. New York Police Department.
NPO. Nihil per orem, or “nothing by mouth” (medical instruction).
NYPD. New York Police Department.
OTC. Over The Counter.
SPQR. Senatus Populusque Romanus, or “The Senate and the Roman People” (the ubiquitous inscription in ancient and modern Rome).
SPQR. Senatus Populusque Romanus, or “The Senate and the Roman People” (the ubiquitous inscription in ancient and modern Rome).
YTM. Yield To Maturity.
So, when is an “acronym” not an acronym? When someone is using it as a misnomer for “abbreviation.”. . .
The Journalism Wall of Shame
The Journalism Wall of Shame displays errors in grammar, punctuation, or language that have appeared recently in the press. Submissions are welcome. Please include the publication's name and date, the story title, and the reporter's name. The publication of these errors in no way places blame for them on a particular person. Sometimes it is the reporter, sometimes the editor, sometimes the headline writer, but—somewhere in the system—somebody should have known better.
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—CNBC.com, “Doug Kass: Ominous Pattern Confirms S&P Is Challenged,” by Lee Brodie, June 23, 2011
“The company . . . has described the Finra action as “ripe with falsehoods.”
— “Nontraded REITs Are Put on Notice by SEC,” by Anton Troianovski and Craig Karmin, the Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2011
“Ripe” means fully mature, my dear Messrs. Troianovski and Karmin; the word required here was “rife,” which means abundant.
“But, ah,” someone protests, “the sentence was a quotation, and one can’t change a quotation.”
Since it is true that one shouldn’t casually correct an error in usage in a quotation, one has two options: to pretend, out of kindness, that the error was only a typo; or to indicate that the error is the speaker’s own, and not the reporter’s or the editor’s. “Sic,” the Latin word for thus is used for just that purpose: to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error, has been retained in its original form.
The sentence, then, should either have been, kindly, corrected to read,
“The company . . . has described the Finra action as “rife with falsehoods.”
or, unkindly, have read,
“The company . . . has described the Finra action as “ripe with falsehoods [sic].”
Interesting, not-so-trivial trivia of the week:
“There are more English speakers in India than in the rest of world combined.”
“There are more English speakers in India than in the rest of world combined.”
—George Evans, of Oppenheimer Funds, appearing on Bloomberg Radio’s Power Breakfast, June 24, 2011
Pronunciation Guide to Names in the News:
—The correct pronunciation of (Mario) “Draghi,” the name of the Italian who will succeed (Jean-Claude) Trichet as president of the European Central Bank, is DRAH-gee.
—The correct pronunciation of Blagojevich is RAHD blah-GOY-eh-vitch. (One needs to refer to the man by name in order to be specific, because simply saying “the ex-governor of Illinois who went to prison” could be a reference to any number of ex-governors of Illinois.)
—The correct pronunciation of Blagojevich is RAHD blah-GOY-eh-vitch. (One needs to refer to the man by name in order to be specific, because simply saying “the ex-governor of Illinois who went to prison” could be a reference to any number of ex-governors of Illinois.)
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