Talk:Acronym

What about translating acronyms and initialisms?

Does someone have experience with this? I think it's important to know how acronyms and etc. fare when translated from their original language to another language. Dorthea Glenn (talk) 13:04, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The answers are multivariate. Some initialisms are translated (for example, "AIDS" in English, but "SIDA" in Spanish), while others are translingual (for example, ISO is ISO no matter whether English, French, Spanish, or otherwise). Proper names such as "FBI" remain intact in translated matter (that is, the Spanish translation of "Federal Bureau of Investigation" may be something like "Agencia Federal de Investigación", but the acronym doesn't become "AFI" upon the translation of the sentence, because "FBI" is the established, recognizable name in either language. (Just like English has always said "KGB" for the former "Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti" rather than calling it the "CSS" as in "Committee for State Security".) Transliteration between scripts can add another layer; Russian "CCCP" and French "SSSR" are "the same" initialism (pronounced "ess-ess-ess-err" in both cases), but "CCCP" is written in the Cyrillic script (and thus triggers the spelling pronunciation "see-see-see-pee" to an average English-speaking brain). Other fun facts: English says "see-eye-ay" (CIA), but Spanish says "see-ah" (as if written "cía"); however, notice at the same time that Spanish does not write "ACI" (which is what you'd get from the translation "Agencia Central de Inteligencia" if you were to abbreviate it). But then again, Spanish says "EEUU" (from Estados Unidos) more often than it says "USA", showing that general themes do have exceptions. Common-noun abbreviations, rather than proper-noun ones, are where languages tend to diverge (that is, tend not to be translingual). For example, "SS" works for "stainless steel" in English, but not in French; there, "inox" wins (inoxydable, "not oxidizable"). English and the Romance languages all can use "e.g." if they want to abbreviate "for example" (par example, por ejemplo) (because they all recognize the Latin exempli gratia) and "i.e." if they want to abbreviate "that is" (because they all recognize the Latin "id est"); meanwhile, German recognizes those, too, but more often likes to use its own native "zB" (zum Beispiel, "for example") and "dh" (das heißt, "that is"). Beyond the above, each language has many initialisms unique to it, and translation includes both the initialism and its expansion. — ¾-10 02:15, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Does someone know how acronyms and etc. improve or reduce readability when used in certain cases?

Specifically, cases not mentioned (or only glossed over) where the usage of the communication device (Internet, reference manual, maintenance manual, marketing sheet, smartphone, and many others) dictates random access on the part of the user, meaning an acronym spelled out the first time does little or no good for people entering an online help system at a random point. Does anyone feel confident enough to speak to this subject and what the writer/creator of such communications should do with acronyms? (spell them out each time? include a card or printable reference "glossary"? or ?) Dorthea Glenn (talk) 13:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

This topic is currently covered in the article at Acronym and initialism > Aids to learning the expansion without leaving a document. The biggest aids for the nonlinear (random access) reading mode are the onscreen ones—tooltips, hyperlinks, and search. The tooltip option is often very nice and could be put to much wider use than it is. For example, in Wikipedia, Template:Abbr allows you to put an unobtrusive underline under an abbreviation such as HIV or HIPAA, and if you hover your mouse over it, it will provide the expansion. (Works on desktop and laptop; results may vary with mobile.) As for search, readers reading onscreen, anywhere across the web, will do well to learn the habit that they can always try ctrl-f in any browser to bring up a "find" dialog. For the print medium, the abovementioned 3 tactics (tooltips, hyperlinks, and search) don't help, but what does help is a key/legend/glossary that is easily found at the top or bottom of the document. (Prime example: a standard sidebar element in each chapter of a textbook, defining all abbrevs used in the chapter.) The editorial advice to "just spell them out each time" is context-dependent in its appropriateness. There will be editorial contexts where it's the best choice, and there will also be other editorial contexts where it's pedantic, or distracting, or cumbersome. — ¾-10 01:34, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Proposed move to Acronym

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move per WP:COMMONNAME Salix (talk): 10:42, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

---

Acronym and initialism → Acronym – Per recent discussion at WP:TITLE. 219.79.72.251 (talk) 23:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Allow me to copy the rationale here.

• "Initialism" has very scarce representation in mainstream dictionaries, and generally in reliable sources
• Google count: 1 million for initialism versus 150 million for acronym (Google news: 244 vs 167,000; Google books: 11,600 vs 1,500,000)
• Even Pain and nociception has finally moved to a sensible title
• Initialism is essentially a historical trivia, and in its article it is receiving undue weight
• In some points, info about initialism in that article lacks supporting reliable sources and it smells of original research. For example, the last part of the Nomenclature section.
• Current title is not encyclopedic. Encyclopedias tend to avoid "and" in titles, unless the article discusses dual concepts, or anyway concepts that naturally have comparable notability
• Current title is in conflict with many other WP:TITLE guidelines and principles, and I quote:
  • Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources
  • When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title resembles titles for similar articles, precisely identifies the subject, and is short, natural, and recognizable.
  • Article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject by
  • Recognizability – Titles are names or descriptions of the topic that are recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic
  • Naturalness – Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
  • Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise enough to unambiguously identify the topical scope of the article, but not overly precise
  • Conciseness – Titles are concise, and not overly long
  • The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists
  • The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural.
  • Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms
  • Other encyclopedias may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register as well as what name is most frequently used [...] A search engine may help to collect this data
  • When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph
• Also from WP:AND, which no longer contemplates Acronym and initialism as an example:
  • Where possible, use a title covering all cases

I also seek to reduce the disproportionate count of "initialism" uses in the article, also per WP:UNDUE (except in the Nomenclature section of course), but let's get the title changed first. Thanks. 219.79.72.251 (talk) 23:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose; these are not synonyms but closely related topics. Powers ^T 18:10, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment The relationship between the two terms is not being questioned here, and it is irrelevant to this site's title guidelines. Many articles cover one or more topics which are closely related to the title topic. For example, Maclaurin series redirects to Taylor series, and vector space also defines and covers the concept of vector (mathematics). In fact, I would put to you that Acronym and initialism also mentions the (non-synonymous) concept of alphabetism (which redirects there), yet alphabetism does not appear in the title.

This is not a matter of relationship between the terms, it's a matter of common use and lack of notability and support from reliable sources to justify such prominence. And what site policy has to say about it. 220.246.135.158 (talk) 00:21, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

• Support nothing would delight me more than to downplay the significance of the rarely-used (outside of Wikipedia) term "initialism", provided that the article continues to discuss the full spectrum of lexical items that are referred to as "acronyms". Nohat (talk) 00:33, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
• Support Both acronyms and initialisms are commonly referred to acronyms. We need not be so imprecise in the body of the article, but the title choice should be informed by common usage. The fact that Firefox's auto-spellcheck always marks "initialism" as a misspelling just reinforces that view. --BDD (talk) 16:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

---

Do we have a consensus or is more discussion needed? 219.79.91.190 (talk) 23:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Style guides - precede by "a" or "an"

We have Acronym#Orthographic_styling all about the use of full stops, plurals, capitalisation etc. What we don't have - but I think we should - is a section covering what style guides say, what people do etc, about the use of either "a" or "an" before acronym or initialisation. For example, should one refer to "a FAQ" or "an FAQ", "a RFC" or "an RFC"?

There's a discussion at WT:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#"a RFC" vs "an RFC" about what if anything Wikipedia's Manual of Style should say about the matter. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:36, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

We could make a reference to the above-mentioned Wikipedia Manual of Style discussion at the end of the section "Other conventions", or better yet we could embed that content within this article (if that's possible--sorry, I'm still new here). I agree that I think we should have a discussion about it in this section in some way, however, even if it is simply a hyperlink to the manual of style's information. I'd prefer a full discussion, however, as we have done with the other issues--it should be a short discussion.

For example, use "a" or "an", whichever follows common usage for the way in which the acronym is most commonly pronounced--either spelled out letters or altogether as a "word" ("laser" being an example of the result of that). If you spell out the letters individually, for FAQ you'd use "an" "... an F. A. Q....", for TOC "...a T. O. C." Alternatively, if you pronounced these as though they were a word, for FAQ "... a fack...", for TOC "...a tock...", for SCUBA "...a scooba diver....". And so on.

(Perhaps putting these examples in a table would be cleaner/better...) Dorthea Glenn 18:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

DVD

DVD is supposed to have both "No official meaning" and DVD to stand for "Digital Versatile Disc." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.48.38.232 (talk) 05:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Are we going to have a description of every acronym in Wikipedia? That could be a separate Wiki all to itself, and a slippery slope if we begin listing them on this or any other page: it will balloon out of control. I used to know 18 different things that ABS stood for, for example (it was for work, don't ask). The writer above is correct, however, in that "DVD" is commonly misused but actually means, "digital versatile disk" (with a "k"; only laser discs (LDs) use the "c"). I've never heard of the first statement, however, that it's supposed to have "No official meaning". Dorthea Glenn 18:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorthea Glenn (talk • contribs)

Proposed move of related article

Hello, for your information I am suggesting a page move from "List of acronyms and initialisms" (to "List of acronyms"), consistently with the above move. 219.73.121.119 (talk) 12:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the move, but feel that the title should be changed from "List of Acronyms" to "Lists of Acronyms" (plural "Lists"), which I think is more grammatically correct and descriptive (implying that we are listing lists of acronyms, and not the acronyms themselves). Dorthea Glenn 18:41, 5 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorthea Glenn (talk • contribs)

Scientific community use of contrived acronyms?

Wondering if it is worthwhile to add scientific creations of obviously contrived acronyms for the ease of pronunciation or similarity to real words. As an example, ATLAS refers both to the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System or to the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS. --70.79.150.161 (talk) 00:14, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

As in the case of DVD, I recommend against going down the path of listing and spelling out specific acronyms as it will be a slippery (and contentious) slope. (In this I have a lot of/too much experience). For example, I used to know 18 things that ABS stood for.... You see the sickening problem. Lots of scientific uses of the acronyms will be specific to a single lab/school, also, and may mislead others who are from somewhere else. Dorthea Glenn 18:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)