The Lazy Man's Guide to Acronyms

It’s human nature to want to expend the minimum possible effort. Why say National Aeronautics and Space Administration when you can simply say NASA?

An acronym is usually formed by taking the first letters of the full form to create a new word. The NASA example of abbreviating is called initialism. It’s also possible to snatch a few extra letters and still form an acronym. RADAR = RAdio Distance And Ranging. Radar is an example an acronym has become so familiar that it has become a proper word, people don’t even bother capitalising it and relatively few people know what radar stands for.

Some acronyms are pronounced as words, such as our earlier NASA example, and some are spelt out letter by letter. Then there are examples combining the two approaches such as CD-ROM (cee-dee rom). Some acronyms may stand for more than one thing depending on the field of use. IRA (spelt out letter by letter is an Irish terrorist organisation) and IRA (pronounced as word eye-ra) is a tax-efficient savings scheme.


TLA’s

My first introduction to the world of TLA’s (Three Letter Abbreviations) was in the in the world of eighties computing. TLA’s were the In Thing (amongst the nerdy anyway) and were bandied about to keep non-technical users in the dark.

“I have upgraded your PSU, CPU, HDD and RAM”
“What about the motherboard?”
“I haven’t touched that, someone else will need to do that, I only do TLA’s”

There is little point in using acronyms unless people know what you’re talking about. Style guides advise that you should (unless it’s a very common example) let your readers know what the abbreviation stands for. After that you can feel free to use the acronym. I remember talking to some girl on IRC (internet relay chat) back in the early days of the internet. She typed in “ASL”. I promptly ended the conversation. How was I to know that she was asking my Age Sex and Location? I thought she was being abusive and calling me an a**hole.

Nowadays we have MSN messenger and phone texting. LOL is a much overused phrase. There are already keyboards available that allow us to type words like LOL with a single keystroke. No doubt, in time, PMSL will become a standard key on mobile phones.


Mnemonics

The colours of the rainbow? Easy..

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

How do I remember that? By means of a mnemonic (memory aid). At school I was taught two methods of remembering the initial letters of the colours.

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain - spelling out ROYGBIV
Or the letters can just as easily split that up into a person’s name of sorts Roy G. Biv

Redundancy

So accustomed are we to using acronyms that the meaning behind them is often pushed to the back of our minds and we add words that are already in the expanded form of the acronym.

PIN Number -> Personal Identification Number number
ATM Machine -> Automated Telling Machine machine
SIM card -> Subscriber Identity Module card

I hope you have enjoyed this particular lazy man’s guide to acronyms (LMGTA). So, from me, it’s TTFN (tata for now)