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Strange how it doesn’t mention how acronym usage is cultural. Americans and their military love acronyms, and they are very liberal in their usage compared to other languages. There are at least a couple posters here with a clear background as USMC or similar whose insightful comments on geopolitics read like a sitrep from CENTCOM and get routinely called out to expand their acronyms. American cultural affectations t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely! I’ll dive into this a bit more in the second section, where even technical acronyms can be considered harmful because they are learned at a surface level and then spread at meme-like speed. For instance most people don’t know that even though both CAP and ACID contain consistency, they do not refer to the same idea. In CAP it’s about linearizability, while in ACID it’s about preserving invariants.
> For instance most people don’t know that even though both CAP and ACID contain consistency, they do not refer to the same idea. But wouldn't people still be unaware of the difference in meaning if the acronyms were spelled out? The word "consistency" appears in both names, with no indication that its meaning is context-dependent. I don't think you can lay the blame for this one at the feet of the acronyms.
For example, I work in hospitality bookkeeping/accounting. Back in 2018 on a call with Chowly I learned Third-Party Online Ordering (TOOS) to refer to the then growing list of companies such as Caviar, Grubhub, DoorDash, etc.
Meanwhile I continued to hear from colleagues a variety of descriptive nouns such as, delivery platform, third-party delivery, delivery apps.
Which was OK, until the market diversified and actual delivery companies appeared, Relay chief among them.
So when someone spoke of delivery-something the question was are you talking about food ordering or food delivery platform?
Funny, but a controlled vocabulary goes with bookkeeping like peas with carrots.
As an aside, i have to spend some time on the phone with vendors and got tired of the dogs breakfast of words used to spell out a serial number or email, Irving-Boy-Momma, Ice-Ball-Monday, and other endless variations. Now I’m Nato compliant, haha. India-Bravo-Mike.
Strange how it doesn’t mention how acronym usage is cultural. Americans and their military love acronyms, and they are very liberal in their usage compared to other languages. There are at least a couple posters here with a clear background as USMC or similar whose insightful comments on geopolitics read like a sitrep from CENTCOM and get routinely called out to expand their acronyms. American cultural affectations t…
What's a sitrep? What's USMC? What's CENTCOM? What's USMNT? I wouldn't have to ask any of this were these expanded. Abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms do nothing but to burden the reader for the sake of conveniencing the writer.
I agree that acronyms can be overused, especially in marketing. However, a big part of why Tech, software, computer science, etc. have a lot of acronyms is because there are a lot of new, often abstract things to name, and acronyms are an easy and straightforward way to create a reasonably unique and short name for a new thing. And I don't think anyone would really want to write out all of "hypertext transfer protoco…
> acronyms are an easy and straightforward way to create a reasonably unique and short name for a new thing Convenience for the writer at the expense of the reader. Convenience is no excuse to be unclear. These names given to a thing may last for decades. Starting out naming them ambiguously is lazy and irresponsible.
Like pronouns, the 'antecedent' may be unclear causing difficulty for the reader. However, pronouns and abbreviations can help communication and be convenient to the reader.
Acronyms have the advantage of being pronounceable and so treated more naturally as words.
Like jargon, when the context is a historical first reference rather than first reference within a text of moderate length, the meaning can be obscure to those not familiar with the context. (One of my college essays was faulted for using "inertia" in the physics sense, specifically that a body in motion tends to remain in motion which is contrary to the common use of inert/inactive/unmoving. It was a natural use to me, particularly for the image used, but it was wrong for the audience.)
Assuming familiarity is a common human flaw (xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501 ). As has been mentioned this can also be used for in-group/expertise signalling. Yet density in communication does have value. (Math would certainly be tedious if every proof started from axioms.)
I agree that being unclear is bad, especially for mere convenience. On the other hand being verbose can be tedious and even insulting (by implying a lack of familiarity with matters obvious to the reader).
I thought the main problem with initialisms was not ambiguity but unfamiliarity. Yes, there are many AMAs and sometimes the local context is insufficient to remove ambiguity (in which cases the initialism might be expanded for clarity or context clues added). However, my experience has been more often that intialisms had no meaning to me (beyond immediate context) -- a vocabulary issue -- than my being uncertain which meaning was intended (ambiguity).
Specialized terms like the "Social Contract" can use capitalization to indicate a jargon use and the plain sense of the words does give some clues to the intent, but such can also risk a false sense of comprehension. The writer would actually be depending on the reader's familiarity with the jargon use.
(I wish Page Table Cache had been adopted instead of Translation Lookaside Buffer even though tee el bee seems to flow more more easily from the tongue. Besides being more complete -- a TLB also caches permissions and other page table entry information and could cache page directory entries -- "cache" has a modern jargon sense closer to the typical design and "lookaside" typically does not apply to L2 TLBs.)
Communication is difficult and taking the time to choose the very best writing is rare. Even with care, migration of word meaning or connotation can make a choice worse than alternatives (and the migration can be across cultures and not just across time).
[I am not concise, but I still like initialisms.]
I agree that acronyms can be overused, especially in marketing. However, a big part of why Tech, software, computer science, etc. have a lot of acronyms is because there are a lot of new, often abstract things to name, and acronyms are an easy and straightforward way to create a reasonably unique and short name for a new thing. And I don't think anyone would really want to write out all of "hypertext transfer protoco…
Really small comment to what you wrote, but that's one of the things that make me love English over my own native language (Spanish): the way you can build and combine words to describe a complex idea, in a way that you would need a full sentence in other languages like French or Spanish. Information density in the English language is higher than in romance languages, and that's great for work. I vastly prefer to wri…
The relative lack of conjugation and declension seems to hurt by constraining word order and reducing opportunities for sound similarity. Of course having rhymes be common also tends to reduce their impact.
Inflection (I think) is part of the cause of extra syllables, so has multiple impacts.
The length itself does seem to add something to the flow/lyricism, but I wonder if there is also a stronger sense of sound whereas English may be more a little more chaotic (not just having multiple roots but borrowing words more often).
Acronyms I can handle. What I've always hated is aNz style compressions. a11y, a16z, stuff that you can't even guess at a decoding unless you know it already.
I don't have to guess because I'm smart enough to look things up. P.S. The response is a ridiculous non sequitur -- I didn't say anything either for or against such terms, just that their meaning can be discerned. But I would note that all of language requires all readers to be familiar with terms and their meanings. And specifically, if people aren't familiar with the notion of language-independent code then they ar…
Literary culture is so confusing.
Anyway, the editorial rule is to spell it out on the first use and then to abbreviate it:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced today... ...NASA says...
Many articles fail to do this and assume insider knowledge. It's all fine and good after you look it up or if you're an expert and familiar with the topic. Good for you. For everyone else, in other disciplines, or lay people, or for students, it's nice to extend the courtesy of spelling it out once.
Agree acronyms are often used to signal expertise and depth that isn’t really there, or even needed. But I do think non serious acronyms should be still allowed: YAGNI, YAML, SNAFU, BHAG, GNU, etc.