Talk:Acronym/Archive 6

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Acronyms that no longer stand for anything

How does one call them? Examples are AOL (formerly America Online), SOAP (formerly Simple Object Access Protocol) and VLC (formerly VideoLAN Client). - Sikon 12:43, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The Pseudo-acronym article asserts these should be called "orphan acronyms", but the sourcing is pretty weak and smacks of original research. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 21:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

They supposed to be called obsolete acronyms121.44.24.216 10:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Source? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 22:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this (at least partly) covered under Usage, Case in the para starting "Some acronyms undergo assimilation into ordinary words..."?

Interesting question. I worked for a company (acquired by GE a little over a year ago)named IDX It was hard to explain to customers and others that IDX was not an acronym for anything. This may be a one-time situtation, but I wonder if there are other "pseudo acronyms" or "false acronyms." --Russell 20:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

How about ISO? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.224.81.14 (talk) 23:22, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

SAT stands for Scholastic Aptitude Test. ISO uses its name in full on all standards it publishes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.28.224.59 (talk) 13:41, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

ISO is not, and never has been, an acronym. The two official languages of ISO are English and French, in which its full names are the International Organization for Standardization and l'Organisation internationale de normalisation. If it were an acronym, English-speakers would callit IOS and French-speakers OIN. Dricherby (talk) 00:18, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Who invented the appalling "word" - if it can be called that - "initialism"? They should be shot at dawn, figuratively, of course. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnC (talk • contribs)

It used to be better explained in the article—I'm not seeing it now upon quick skimming. The word has existed since 1895, as I recall the year cited earlier. It predated the coining of the word "acronym" by 2 decades. It is often used to make a distinction between abbrevs pronounced as a string of initials versus abbrevs pronounced as a word. So it's not as hideous or neologous as you might imagine! — ¾-10 18:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

fictional espionage organizations

There's really no reason that this much of this article should be taken up with a list of fictional espionage organization. This seems to be screaming for its own article.

Objections? —mako (talk•contribs) 13:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking exactly the same thing. Create an article Fictional espionage organizations, move the big list there, and add just a note here, e.g., "The names of fictional espionage organizations are often acronyms or backronyms." —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 14:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll split that article out now. mako (talk•contribs) 15:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: For interested readers, FYI: The spun-off article is now called List of fictional espionage organizations. — Lumbercutter 20:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

External links

On 21:16, 2 May 2007, I deleted the External Links section. On 04:36, 5 May 2007, somebody at IP address 203.82.183.148 added them back in. So I guess there's some disagreement. • Here's why I think the EL section should be deleted: Wikipedia is not a web directory. The EL section was just a list of acronym indexes. It contained no assertions of notability. Such a section is just a spam/cruft magnet. It will grow without bound as everyone adds their own personal favorite sites. Any assertion that a site is "the best" or "the biggest" lacking attribution to a reliable source is original research. If someone wants to find acronym sites, they can Google for "acronym sites or just "acronym". • So that's my rationale. Objections? Suggestions? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 22:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Nomenclature

The introduction says 'There is sharp disagreement on the difference in meaning between the terms acronym and initialism; see the "Nomenclature" section below. Another term, alphabetism, is sometimes used to describe abbreviations pronounced as the names of letters.' Who is it that disagrees that initialisms are those pronounced as separate letters and that acronyms are those that are pronounced as words? I know that some people use the word acronym to mean initialism, in the same way that a lot of words are often misused (a lot of people say sarcasm when they mean irony, for example), but that doesn't change the dictionary definitions of the words initialism and acronym.

Can't we just define the terms as they are in dictionaries?--Jcvamp 14:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Any reputable linguistics text would tell you that an acronym is pronounced as a word and an initialism/abbreviation is pronounced as letters. However, that same linguistics text will tell you that no language is static and that meanings of words can change over time, based on how they are used. I think the phrase "sharp disagreement" is inaccurate do describe the difference in meaning. Perhaps the sentences in the intro section should instead focus on the disparity in the popular usage of the terms, and read something like this:

While linguistics scholars have set definitions for both acronyms (letters pronounced as words) and abbreviations (or alphabetisms, letters pronounced as individual letters), there is a disparity in the popular usage of the terms. (See "Nomenclature" below.)

As such, the first paragraph of the nomenclature section would need some editing. Thoughts? Cmw4117 17:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"Sharp disagreement" is a bad phrase, how does one distinguish a "sharp" disagreement with a (presumably) "blunt" disagreement? My dictionary gives the specific meaning and then says "also..." giving the generic usage. I suggest: "originally acronym was used only for those abbreviations which were pronounced as words, however the word is increasingly used more generically to denote initialisms as well." Thehalfone 11:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and I think the article on bandwidth provides a useful reference. There the original technical meaning is emphasized without belittling derived colloquial uses.

I do sympathize with the idea that the meaning of words changes in practical use, but I also like the idea of using different well-defined terms for different things. Usually, a language develops into something richer than before, but here I see a backwards case where the idea of acronyms as 'pronouncable abbreviations' is being lost, and people simply use the word in place of 'abbreviation' or 'initialism'. TeknoHog 17:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Dictionaries are by no means consistent in how they define the term -- witness the six citations, four of which are dictionaries (and another an "encyclopedia of English"), including an Oxford dictionary. Any claim that "linguistics scholars" will always agree that "acronyms are always pronounceable" is thus demonstratively false by the citations already present in the article, no? While I, too, dislike ambiguity, and wince as language sometimes devolves instead of evolving, I really don't see how we can make the claim that a particular usage is "improper" here. • That said, if the wording can be cleaned up while still maintaining an unbiased discourse, I'm all for it. To that end, I've removed "sharp" from "sharp disagreement"; I don't think it was helpful there. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 19:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I see I've just jumped into this by rewriting the introduction before reading this. Well, if my view doesn't reflect usage, please revert. Pol098 01:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that since reputable sources agree that 'acronym' doesn't necessarily only mean abbreviations made from initials that can be pronounced as words, the introduction to the article shouldn't make that assertion. Certainly some people do make that assertions, but others do not, and maintaining NPOV mandates that we not take sides on the issue and just report what those who do take sides claim. Nohat 03:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

As an additional note, this article used to go into some detail on the disagreement on definitions in the introduction, but this was deemed to skew the focus of the article onto the disagreement, so instead the introductory paragraph mentions both names, describes the union of the sets of things that people would tend to group into those categories, and then attempts later to sift the meanings apart in the 'nomenclature' section. If anyone has a better idea on how to word the first paragraph, I'm all for it, but it can't make assertions about any particular set of definitions being correct. Nohat 03:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

• Nohat's comment above sums it up perfectly, IMO. Re what the issues are, and how this article should treat them.
• I just want to note, additionally, that one idea found further above, that there was a chronological process wherein the terms acronym and initialism began as "officially" defined and then "got corrupted", in so many words, is a nice idea that does not match reality. In reality a wild language is just a collection of conventions, some competing or overlapping. English in particular doesn't even have an "officiating" body such as la Real Academia Española or l'Académie française. The truth is probably that initialism was coined without regard for the pronunciation distinction, then acronym was coined at some point with the intent of making the pronunciation distinction, and the terms have co-existed ever since in a state of varying, overlapping usage.
• But anyway my main point for posting here is just to say that Nohat is right and the basic design for the lead and the nomenclature section are now, and should stay, structurally as he described, give or take further tweaking.
• — Lumbercutter 20:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This may be helpful: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/essay_-_what_is_a_word.pdf It says that the British tradition is to use initialism for abbreviations where the first letters must be spoken, and acronym where they do not. In the American tradition the line is not so clearly drawn and acronym is acceptable for both. Interestingly, in the British tradition acronyms such as Nato are Aids not all capitalised. We could alter the nomenclature section to reflect this? 81.96.204.233 14:39, 25 October 2007 (GMT)

Re cap-scheme differences and punctuation differences as ways of orthographically reflecting the pronunciation: these are already covered under #Orthographic_styling, so I think that the most that we should discuss them in the #Nomenclature section should be as a cross-reference to the main discussion—maybe one sentence in parentheses, such as "(The pronunciation difference is sometimes reflected orthographically, as discussed under [[#Orthographic styling]].)" — Lumbercutter 22:27, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that there was some element of consensus here, but I really think there's an unadressed issue with what Nohat is saying above. It's completely correct to say that the article shouldn't make a contentious assertion, but at present the article is leaving out a vital piece of information and as such gives an unrealistic portrayal of the way in which the two words are used. It presents the situation as a simple debate with no side having the upper hand; whilst in reality there are certain contexts (the United Kingdom being one of them) where there is no such debate and using the word "acronym" to refer to an initialism is deemed an error. The article doesn't emphasise this enough in my opinion and gives the impression to the lay reader that both usages are correct in all contexts. Blankfrackis (talk) 12:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the only evidence that there is a British–American divide in usage is a document [1] with no author or authority given. If anyone can give a reputable, reliable source that makes that assertion, then we can talk about adjusting the wording in the article. I, personally, don't believe that there is any British–American usage divide on acronym and initialism. What there is is a pedant–non-pedant usage divide, which pedants often perceive as various kinds of geographic or socioeconomic usage differences, British–American being one of the more popular hypotheses.

I do note, however, that the essay makes an important note distinguishing the category of initialisms and acronyms from other types of abbreviations: "an initialism always has its own pronunciation, distinct from the pronunciation of the longer form which it represents. Abbreviations do not usually have their own pronunciations." A lexical categorical distinction between initialisms and acronyms based on how they are pronounced is not useful to most people (although it is the kind of distinction that can whip pedants into a frenzy), but the overall category of "lexical items formed from initial letters" is useful, and that is why so many people call them all "acronyms". It is, for most practical purposes, a distinction without a difference, and that is why the term initialism enjoys such a tiny amount of usage compared to acronym. Nohat (talk) 06:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I challenge the claim that "backronym" does not include the entirety of what is assigned to the (as far as I know, nonexistent) jargon term "contrived acronym". The distinction made here seems to contradict popular usage of the term "backronym". I've added "citation needed" notes to the article itself, as I think this constitutes "original research".Digitante (talk) 03:54, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You're right that that claim can be challenged. The essential problem in challenging it is that it is only another instance of the description-vs-prescription argument, so to make this article what it needs to become, it won't be a matter of either side "winning"; instead, we'll have to evolve the coverage to concisely explicate the fact that a description-vs-prescription rivalry is at work. The word "backronym" has both senses in the wild (the one that includes contrived acronyms and the one that doesn't); but prescriptively many people who want to enforce careful usage try to maintain the latter sense as the only preferred sense of "backronym". The comment about the participial-adjective-plus-noun phrase "contrived acronym" being "nonexistent" has surfaced at least once before in this article's edit summaries and/or talk threads. It arises because people take the phrase to be asserted here as being an "official label" (for lack of a better way to express that). But this article is not trying to assert that it's an "official label"; it's simply using it as adjective-plus-noun, at most a collocation, to mean, simply, in a completely common-noun sense, "acronyms that are contrived". It is the necessary and logical (natural, not official) term to stand in contradistinction to "backronym" when the fussier sense of that term is being prescribed to exclude contrived acronyms. Thus it is a natural term to keep using here. But really the way to address the concern that you raised (for you're not alone in raising it) is probably to develop the coverage more explicitly in this article, to give a clear explication of the linguistic forces that are at work. I think maybe what happened earlier (reflected in the current version) is that the prescriptivists shouted louder and carried the versioning. Which, to bring this back around to your point, is not how this article should be. My point here is only that "to fix it is not a matter of replacing prescription with description, but rather of explaining to the reader that both exist in tension with each other". If anyone has time to work on this, I may jump in and help. — ¾-10 00:55, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Nonclamature

Tch tch, haven't you heard of "non-CLA-mature." That's a person who refuses to use Conjugated Linoleic Acid because they are too grown up to believe in foolish weight loss fads.

Sorry. --Russell 17:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

☻

— Lumbercutter 13:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Case: small caps

Why no mention of the (once?) common typographical convention of setting all-cap acronyms/initialisms in "small-cap" font? This is begging for inclusion and a cross reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps, which specifically links to the Initialism entry because of its mention of this convention.

I agree. 205.228.73.12 09:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I just added it. Pasted the info from Small caps with only minor changes. — ¾-10 00:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Reference to answers.com

I removed the reference to False etymology at answers.com because it's the wiki page for false etymology. The wiki page is linked earlier in the section, and that statement has 2 other references, so it seemed unnecessary.

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This is the first WP article I see with an "X and Y" title. I think it looks unprofessional and unencyclopedic. I propose we rename to "Acronym" and redirect "Initialism" to it. Unless of course we want a separate article for initialism. Otherwise we should rename (to name one) Norton's theorem to Norton's theorem and Norton equivalent. Two distinct, but related concepts. I'm not even gonna bother checking, but I bet you that the article was initially called "Acronym" and then some smart arse came along and taught us all about the existence of this obscure term. 205.228.74.13 09:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Not far off. The contents of this page were copied and pasted from acronym to acronym and initialism [2] back in 2004, with a few edits being made at the same time, and the former was redirected to the latter [3]. Whatever the outcome of this request, the break in the edit history will need to be repaired. --Stemonitis 12:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

What harm is the current name causing? What benefit would renaming it yield? I'm not overly thrilled with the current title, but I'm also not big on the idea of changing it just because it's not as "neat" as it could be, when that's likely to mean a lot of work (this article gets linked to a lot) and attract arguments from people on both sides of the acronym/initialism fence. The subject is apparently a messy one anyway (see "Nomenclature" debate in article). • There are many articles with similar titles. • If we must rename the article, I would think it should be to Initialism, since (according to the article), by some definitions, all acronyms are initialisms, but not all initialisms are acronyms, and by the other definitions, the two are interchangeable, so "Initialism" would be least likely to have objections. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 12:20, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

"There are many articles with similar titles." You are right, we should have the article about "Romeo and Juliet" redirect to either "Romeo" or "Juliet". (You are kidding, right?)

Look, I don't care which one it is. If we have to live with "acronym" (which everybody knows and uses) redirecting to "initialism" (which so far as I can see of the online dictionaries I know it is included only by The American Heritage Dictionary), then so be it. But please let's get rid of the current title, it really is unprofessional rubbish. My example about Norton's theorem still stands. The other point you raise about articles linking to it is not a problem, because we can make the current title redirect to whatever we choose, and if that is not satisfactory some bot can take care of the rest.

Wikipedia is not only about showing off. "Initialism" here has undue weight. 205.228.73.11 18:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Regarding other article titles: Ship naming and launching, Fraternities and sororities, Pain and nociception, Sound recording and reproduction, etc., etc., ad infinitum. So, no, I'm not kidding. • How is having a compound article title "unprofessional rubbish"? You keep insisting that it is unprofessional, but provide no supporting argument. • Renaming the article would create several dozen double redirects. Are you volunteering to fix them all? Or to write and run the bot that will? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Supporting argument to the fact that article names like "Acronym and initialism" and "Pain and nociception" are wrong and look unprofessional and showy is that if you look under any respectable encyclopedia under "P" you find "Pain", not "Pain and nociception".

The double redirects argument is a man of straw. We are now discussing what is the right thing to do, not who does what and how to put things right once we decide.

My example about Norton's theorem still stands. My argument about undue weight still stands. "Initialism" is now an obsolescent "did you know?"-type curiosity for geeks and it should be treated as such. Giving it such prominence (and littering other articles by replacing "acronym" with "initialism", by the way) is inaccurate and it is misleading the readers into believing that its usage is more widespread than it actually is. 205.228.74.11 09:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair point on the "Who's going to do it?" question; I'll table that. • Your argument about Norton's theorem, as I understand it, is basically "The article title 'Norton's theorem' only mentions one thing; thus, all article titles should only mention one thing." I find that argument completely hollow. • Your claim that the term "initialism" is obsolete, and thus is being given undue weight, might have some merit, but you need to cite some reliable sources on that. As near as I can tell, from the sources already cited in the article, there is no widespread agreement on this, either in popular use, or in linguistics. • Regarding "and" being unprofessional: I regard your argument of "Look in any respectable encyclopedia" as insufficient. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use of "and", which explicitly allows this. See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions/Archive_7#"X and Y" for the (admittedly short) discussion. If you want to argue that the existing "X and Y" policy should be changed (and maybe you should), please start on the talk page for the policy. • Thank you. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 13:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstood my argument about Norton's theorem. First of all, let's pick a more accessible example: the article Common Hazel is not called Common Hazel and hazelnut, despite treating hazelnut's cultivation, production, use and nutrition in some detail. So, it's more like "Most articles that talk about more than one thing don't have an "X and Y" title. Why should "Acronym and initialism" be an exception?".

Nobody can cite any reliable sources stating that it's not true that "Jhgowjnviq" means something similar to "Acronym", but not finding that term in any dictionary is enough grounds not to mention it at all in this article. Similarly, having quite a few reliable sources supporting that "acronym is the [term] most frequently used and known" is enough grounds to drop it from the title, and perhaps more generally give it a less prominent place. But as I said, if we must live with "Initialism" as the main title and have "Acronym" redirect to it (given that initialism is apparently a more general concept) I am happy to compromise, so this is a side issue.

I think the WP policy on "X and Y" is fine. What I am arguing is that in this case we can, and therefore according to said policy we must, avoid using "and" in the title.

Finally, I would like to point out that, according to your logic, the title as it stands is inaccurate. It should be something like Acronym, Initialism, and also let's not forget alphabetism. 205.228.74.11 10:36, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose rename/move. Current title is accurate. Eliminating initialism from title would make title less accurate, as both subjects are discussed and compared; article is more useful for the combination. A dictionary would separate the entries, but that is one thing Wikipedia is NOT. Finell (Talk) 04:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose move, pending consensus of ongoing discussion (above). —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 13:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support move. A Google search turns up 31,900,000 uses of "acronym" and only 145,000 uses of "initialism". Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me that "acronym" has essentially taken over the meaning formerly divided between these two words. I think the point should be discussed but that the title should be just "Acronym". All that said I do feel the pain of the people who consider that this sort of linguistic change debases the English language. Mergy 13:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

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

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. --Stemonitis 09:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

What about multiletter acronyms?

What about constructions like SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence) and the like, beloved of the military? Do they have a name? Are they acronyms? Pol098 01:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

See Abbreviation#Syllabic abbreviation. Without a doubt they are etically in the same pot as both English acronyms and Chinese acronyms (such as the example given in this article under Nomenclature [Beijing University—Beijing Daxue (literally, North-Capital Big-School 北京大学)—is widely known as Beida (literally, North-Big 北大).]) However, emically, English has no widely-convened-upon unifying name that both "regular" acronyms (such as Nato) and syllabic abbreviations would fall under as subtypes. (Except abbreviation, the most general word. I mean an intermediate-level name). One thing that collaborative Wikipedia-writing often points up is that you can't have etic discussions using only emic terminology without massive circumlocuting. That's nobody's fault—just the nature of reality. — Lumbercutter 23:10, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The earliest definitions in the 1940s in the journal American Speech state "term for words made of the initial letters or syllables of other words" and the Oxford English Dictionary agrees. The journal gives examples such as COMINFORM for COMmunist INFORMation Bureau, UNIVAC, BALREQ (Balance Request). So yes SIGINT is an acronym.Chemical Engineer (talk) 16:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Quite true. This aspect of acronym formation should be covered more systematically in this article in future (I lack time to undertake it currently). Currently the article has a "German" heading that discusses such acronyms in WWII-era German. But I think that there is a correlation-vs-causation issue here: I question whether this was a German-language trend so much as a military-and-government trend. English and Russian have done a lot of this too, in military and government contexts. Militaries and governments simply have a need in their natural course of communication to form acronyms that are more memorable and pronounceable than the consonant-heavy alphabet soup that they get stuck with when they don't use whole syllables. Chemical Engineer's example of Benelux is another good example, as are Delmarva, FoMoCo, various oil company names, and even "sig figs" (which is not usually considered nominally an acronym, but functionally is one). The fundamental logic of this type of acronym is present in many languages—and it does not intrinsically have to be limited to military-and-government usage, either, although it currently tends to be. — ¾-10 17:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The main driver for creating acronyms must be the need to refer to complex phrases often but accurately - this is true of science as well as military, e.g. DNA, ATP, PCB, redox. However other factors come in such as humour, marketing (which can apply to a scientist promoting and idea) or jargon (to baffle outsiders). Chemical Engineer (talk) 17:15, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree. Main reason that military, government, and business (I forgot to include business earlier) started needing so many acronyms in the 20th century (as opposed to before that) is because of technological change (and the social ramifications resulting from it [complex organizations, standardized processes, etc]); and the main driver behind the technological change is science. — ¾-10 23:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The "German" headline indeed makes some very generalistic statement about the preference for syllable acronyms. It completely disregards non-military uses and post-war habits: BKA - Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police), DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik (the GDR), UdSSR - Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetischen Republiken (the USSR), usw. - und so weiter (and so on), z.B. - zum Beispiel (e.g., for example), DNS (outdated German acronym for DNA), UAS (Universelles Analysiersystem), Lkw - Lastkraftwagen (Truck), FB - Fachbereich (university faculty), TU - Technische Universität (Univ. of Technology), and so many more. Admittedly there are not too many originally German acronyms in recent years outside Bundeswehr (Bw) and other official places, as we tend to adopt the English variants. But still, the simplistic part ought to be corrected sometime. Unfortunately I lack the time to do it myself right now, so I leave this comment for the brave soul venturing to do so. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.120.143.92 (talk) 20:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I think many sources that distinguish initialism from acronym include what here is called "syllabic abbreviation" and "acronym-contractions" under "acronym". (Witness colinderies.) I am uneasy about "syllabic abbreviation": I admit it's useful, but I think is a calque from Russian or perhaps German, that was almost never used in English until someone added it to Wikipedia a couple of years ago. It still violates WP:NEOLOGISM. Once it gets shortened to "sylabb" I'm sure all the kids will be saying it. jnestorius^(talk) 21:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, indeed it's important; viz., Comintern, Comecon, Komsomol, and Gosplan. Much of the verbiage coming from Russia during the Cold War contained these monstrosities; the fact that Nazi Germany used them (and in fact Nazi itself is one such) made the habit seem a stigma of totalitarianism; mention that the U.S. Navy did so as well had to be included as a counter. Unease-making neologism? It's a descriptive phrase, not a word never before seen anywhere in the world. How else was I supposed to describe them? 4.154.251.199 (talk) 13:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Slashes

So far the article talks about the dot and upper/lower case variants, but does not even metion the use of the slash character, as in w/o for "without", N/A for "not applicaple", etc. This notation form seems to be used in English language only - maybe only in American English? Anyway I've never seen it in French or German. 195.33.105.17 11:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent point. I just added it under "Showing the ellipsis of letters". I mentioned N/A. (Didn't mention w/o for "without" because I think most people would classify that as a non-acronymous abbreviation.) If anyone thinks of more examples, feel free to augment. — ¾-10 00:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Wilton quote

There's no closing quotation mark on the Wilton quote. I'd put one it, but I'm actually not sure where it ends.Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:57, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Delete the Examples section

I'm thinking we way want to just delete the "Examples" section from the article. It doesn't really flow with the rest of the article. Any examples used to illustrate specific points would serve much better by introducing them as examples in prose, not by tacking them on to a list at the end. See also WP:LIST. This list can never be complete (such a list would be too big for a dedicated page, let alone as part of this article), but it also has no objective criteria for inclusion. It also tends to act as a magnet for people who want to add still more examples. Assuming any worthwhile examples get incorporated into prose mention, does anyone have objections to removing the "Examples" section? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 16:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your logic above, but then when I look at the section as currently written, I think that it makes a good comparison of the variations in usage and pronunciation logic. What about changing the heading of the section from "Examples" (which, as you said, invites people to treat it like an exhaustive list or a place for their own pets, neither of which it can be or should be) to "Comparison of types"? — ¾-10 00:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the table is a useful summary of the paradigms and variations. Although the information might duplicate that of the prose, such duplication is not necessarily redundant. Summary tables are sometimes as helpful for visualisation as graphs or diagrams. A better section-title and a sentence or two explaining the table's purpose should cut down on the listcruft. jnestorius^(talk) 09:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

As an engineer, I like tables rather than having the same information in flowing text. I actually think that illustrating these sorts of acronyms by example is splendid. It expanded my appreciation of the subject and is the sort of thing I would find welcome in an encyclopedia. However, it should not be an invitation to expand. They are about the right number for each example.Chemical Engineer (talk) 13:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I made changes based on this discussion. I kept the big anti-listcruft warning comment that anyone will see if they click "edit" to go add their pet example. — ¾-10 19:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Shortcut?

In the examples section there is a sub-section "Pronounced as the names of letters but with a shortcut" and I don't think any of the examples are a shortcut. In fact in NAACP for example, it is more syllables to say "double", than to just say "A." —Preceding unsigned comment added by MTHarden (talk • contribs) 04:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Word formation

From the article: "As a type of word formation process, acronymy-initialisms are often viewed to be a subtype of shortening processes (other shortening processes being clipping and backformation)." (permalink) I tried to clean that up to what I thought it said, but that got reverted back. Since apparently this has to be phased exactly that way, I'm now asking for some way to verify it. I'm particularly confused by "acronymy-initialisms"; what does that mean? But the rest of it, too. What's a reliable source for it? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 00:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

It doesnt have to be exactly that way. My objections were the following: (1) usually one talks about several different types of word formation processes, so its unusual to speak of "the word formation process" (I think I understand what you mean but usually that is just called word formation), (2) "initialisms are created as a type of shortening" can be put in simpler terms: "initialisms are a type of shortening", (3) "similar to" can mean these are also types of shortening but it could also mean that these are not types of shortening but are similar to initialisms in other respects (basically what I meant to say is that there is category of shortening word formation processes and that acronymy, clipping, & backformation are subclassess of the superordinate shortening category). Also I prefer "shortening process" to just "shortening" but perhaps this is just stylistic. I wanted to say acronymy is often viewed... but I didnt want to imply that I'm speaking of acronyms to the exclusion of initialisms. I havent come up with a better way to phrase than hyphenating acronymy and initialisms, this doesnt work because initialism refers to the word and not the creation of the word. If this is clear and you can make it sound better, please do so.

For sourcing, considering acronymy to be a word formation process is completely uncontroversial. Just cite any book on English word formation or a linguistics dictionary. For the view that acronymy is a type of shortening process, this is the view of John Algeo. I think that we can cite something by him and also probably an article in American Speech by Cannon (which should be consulted for this article anyway). I just wanted to mention his view since he is respected and is one of the first people who really looked at this type of word formation process (which has historically been ignored or marginalized by others). – ishwar  (speak) 05:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

LED

I've heard LED pronounced as both "led" and "el ee dee" - move to context section?

"The" BBC, or just plain BBC?

Perhaps I'm blind, but I wasn't able to find any info in regards to the prefixing of the acronym with the word "the" (i.e. whether or not this is a common or proper practice). I got to thinking about this question after I received a notice of baggage inspection from the Transporation Security Administration. This organization, which I personally would term "the TSA," repeatedly refers to itself in the third person as simply "TSA."

For example: "...the officer may have been forced to break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets having to do this, however TSA is not liable for damage to your locks resulting from this necessary security precaution."

Perhaps it would be appropriate to address this question in the Numerals and constituent words section? ~ Skyscraper (talk) 17:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The best discussion I've seen is this one at Language Log. Which boils down to:

• The Acronym Principle: Acronyms are anarthrous (even when the full names they abbreviate are arthrous).
• The Initialism Principle: In general, initialisms are arthrous if their full forms are (and, of course, anarthrous otherwise).

(in this post, arthrous==>uses "The"; and "BBC" is an initialism rather than an acronym). But it's only a blogpost, not a citable source. jnestorius^(talk) 20:27, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

My 2¢: There is a tendency among people who work for govt 3-letter agencies to omit "the". For example, they often speak of CIA and FBI, not the CIA or the FBI. I think that whoever wrote the TSA baggage notice was simply speaking the native lingo idiomatically and probably didn't think about how the wider English-speaking audience finds such usage OK but nonidiomatic. — ¾-10 00:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I really like that Language Log entry, it makes a lot of sense to me. Pronouncable acronyms would sound silly preceeded by "the" presumably because they are pronounced like proper nouns, unlike initalisms. To me, "the NASA" sounds as strange as "the New York" or "the Melissa," whereas "the CIA" and "the FBI" sound natural to me. Contrary to — ¾-10's assertion that "they often speak of CIA and FBI," I find those two initialisms to be most commonly arthrous - but perhaps this can be attributed to regional lingo, as was suggested.

Either way, I feel the issue of (an)arthrous-ness should be discussed in this article, and I would vote to present it in the way that jnestorius discussed. Do we have any references from usage manuals that differentiate between acronyms and initalisms in regards to articles? The Prentice Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage by Muriel Harris appears to lump acronyms and initalisms together into "abbreviations" (section 36f, page 210) so that doesn't help much at all. ~ Skyscraper (talk) 18:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the distinction that I was pointing out was not one of regional usage, but rather one of within-the-govt usage versus outside-the-govt usage. It is only within-the-govt usage that treats CIA and FBI as anarthrous. Cheers, — ¾-10 01:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

However, the Chemical Industries Association refers to itself as "the CIA". [4] Chemical Engineer (talk) 21:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's any mystery here: "The BBC" is "The British Broadcasting Corporation" and "a BBC employee" is "a British Broadcasting Corporation employee." These seem to follow accurately and easily from the language. Any usage such as "BBC requires..." is just plain wrong — although it may be prevalent.

Representing Plurals and Possessives

The use of MM to represent millions is also common in the financial industry. However, I do not consider it an example of the convention of doubling the letters in the initialism to indicate the plural. MM represents the value of one thousand thousands expressed in Roman numerals. M is one thousand, hence MM for 1 million. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.247.51.149 (talk) 08:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting analysis. It is true that in the financial industry MM is commonly used to mean "millions". I think it does in fact represent a doubling-for-plural à la EEUU for "Estados Unidos". However, it does have that interesting echo of Roman numerals, although it doesn't follow Roman numeral logic completely, because MM in Roman numerals is 2000, not 1,000,000. That is, it is M + M, not M × M. However, you're right that it still echoes Roman numeral usage in a loose-association way, with a predictable mathematics-notation twist thrown in (because it is standard throughout modern maths notation, Roman numerals aside, that MM = M × M). — ¾-10 17:27, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

True, my analysis was slightly flawed and MM is indeed 2,000 - the correct Roman numeral representation of one million is actually M with a bar over top. Nevertheless, the reasoning does remain valid as I also point to the use of MMM to denote billions in both the petroleum and financial industries. The third M now represents a thousand million or a thousand thousand thousands - M × M × M. I reference both [5] and [6], but grant that the use is noted as "less common" in the financial industry. --F1dewd (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

"The argument that initialisms should have no different plural form (for example, "If D can stand for disc, it can also stand for discs") is generally disregarded because of the practicality in distinguishing singulars and plurals". If we can have one, two or ten sheep, why not one, two or ten SMS ? Brendan [ contribs ] 01:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It's not that you *can't*, it's just that people tend to prefer explicit plural inflection. — ¾-10 22:10, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Reversed acronyms

Perhaps we should include a bit about reversed acronyms. That is, where the letters are reversed in order, then pronounced as a word, as in Fatah. This is done in Arabic, but I'm not sure how common it is there, nor if it is done in other languages. Currently, reverse acronym redirects to Backronym. Anyone know more than I? — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 20:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Fatah is definatelly not a backronym. Reverse or reversed acronyms in example Fatah represent a separate category in acronym classification. Unfortunatelly we have the same word "reverse" that can be associated by general public for two different meanings: the first one is where acronym is constructed backwards from the expression (e.g. Fatah - HArakat al-TAhrir al-Watani al-Filastini) and the other one when "reverse" indicates that expression originated from an abbreviation or initialism (e.g. SOS - Save Our Ship). It seems that here is a definate case of a niche for a good linguistics research paper! =) 202.92.40.4 (talk) 11:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Readability

Does anyone know of any studies on how the use of acronyms improves or detracts from readability?

Also, have there been any studies about what acronyms are generally known and therefore safe to use. I've gotten complaints at work about using "e.g." and "i.e.", but I thought these were common knowledge.

Also maybe the article should point out the difference between what an acronym means and what it stands for. For example, some people in the Boston area think that "MBTA" stands for "Metropolitan Boston Transportation Agency" and believe that that's the public transportation system in the Boston area. Actually it stands for "Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority", so they're wrong about what it stands for, but they do know what it means. I keep forgetting what "e.g." stands for, but I know what it means and use it all the time. Bostoner (talk) 15:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Tried to find any research papers on this, but unfortunatelly not been able to get anything relevant. I think the general rule is that in documents or publications any acronym should be introduced before its being used unless its a common term for this area/industry/group or a very well known one known by general public. You don't have to explain all the time what "EU" means to anyone and you don't have to specify the meaning of IP when the topic is addressed to people familiar with telecommunications.202.92.40.4 (talk) 11:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

You can find the meaning of e.g. easily through wikipedia: See E.g. --Twocs (talk) 05:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Nomenclature

I read the discussion about nomenclature on this page, but it seems that the acronym page is not very informative. It suggests that there are three types of acronyms, but doesn't clearly discuss what each might mean. I feel that the introduction should be much tighter. --Twocs (talk) 04:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Table of contents on the right?

Just stopping by and noticed. Why?--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Coined by Bell Labs?

This statement does not appear to be supported by the source. Can anyone substantiate this claim? Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I looked at some Bell Labs publications and found neither "acronym' nor "David Davies." I suggest he did not coin ther term in 1943 because it appears in English in 1940, and earlier in German as Akronym.
Paris Gazette,
Lion Feuchtwanger;
translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
xii, 860 p. 21 cm. New York, Viking Press, 1940.
Chapter 47, Beasts of Prey, pages 665-666:

"His first glance at the _Paris German News_ told Wiesener that this new paper was nothing like the old _P.G._. "They can call it the _P.G.N._ if they like," he thought, "but that's the only difference. Pee-gee-enn; what's the word for words like that, made out of initials? My memory is beginning to fail me. [p. 666] Just the other day there was a technical expression I couldn't remember. I must be growing old. "_P.G._ or _P.G.N._, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.... Pee-gee-enn. It's an acronym, that's what it is. That's what they call words made up of initials. So i remember it after all; that's at least something...."

For Akronym used in 1921 or 1922, giving an example of "Agfa" film:
Brockhaus Handbuch des Wissens in vier Bänden.
Edition
6. gänzlich umgearb. und wesentlich verm. Aufl. von Brockhaus’ kleinem Konversations-Lexikon.
Published Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, [1922-23, c1921-23] v.1 p. 37
http://books.google.com/books?id=P9BPAAAAMAAJ&q=akronym&dq=akronym&hl=en&ei=tKv7TKmBGIP68AbAno2oCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Coralapus (talk • contribs) 14:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like you are really onto something. I encourage you to revise the article per the refs that you have found and can cite inline. — ¾-10 00:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

RAF etc

How do we deal with cases like RAF (Royal Air Force)? Sometimes it's pronounced as a single word (pron. "raff"), sometimes as 3 distinct letters (pron. "ah ey eff"). My attention was drawn to this when I was editing an article that referred to "... an RAF officer". I was about to change "an" to "a", when I realised that, while I usually say "raff", others usually say "ah ey eff". -- JackofOz (talk) 02:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

These are mentioned briefly in the lede, with URL and IRA given as examples. The guideline in editing is that for some abbrevs, both pronunciations are valid choices; follow the author's lead, if the author's preferred pronunciation becomes apparent via a-vs-an. (BTW, as a US American, I usually hear /are eh eff/ when the RAF is mentioned on TV, but maybe in the UK one hears /raff/ too? Any RAF members out there who can comment on what one hears inside the RAF?) — ¾-10 16:27, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I should have read that more closely. I must say I have never, ever heard anyone pronounce URL or IRA as words rather than as letters, but obviously there must be some people who do. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I also have never heard any of the above mentioned words pronounced as words and not distinct letters. Where is the evidence that people actually do this? (Fjf1085 (talk) 17:30, 16 May 2012 (UTC))

dead on arrival (on arrival)

I've seen this a lot on forums, "DOA on arrival". I LOL'd. 24.129.233.34 (talk) 01:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

FAQ vs. fax

The example "FAQ: ([fæk] or F A Q) frequently asked questions" strikes me as odd. Well, I'm a native-speaker of U.S. English, but I don't live in an English-speaking environment. Do people really say [fæk]? If so, we have an amusing irony: FAQ [fæk] is plural, but fax [fæks] is singular! Jakob37 (talk) 04:23, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

LOL! Never thought of that! Actually I have heard people say [fæk], but I consider them pretentious... Jubilee♫clipman 19:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

How is that ironic? Anyway, I say "fack". I've never heard anyone spell it out before. Then again, it isn't that common of a word anyway, at least not to talk about. It doesn't seem pretentious to say it that way. (Really, using the word pretentious itself seems kind of pretentious to me :) ) 71.199.190.190 (talk) 19:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Precise definition?

The header states: There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms. However, the article later cites 10 dictionaries that clearly define Acronym as a pronouncable word. While there may indeed be no "universal" agreement, there is a clear consensus among authorities (10 against 3). The header is possibly misleading. However, most people do use acronym to refer to both meanings and probably have never even heard of initialism. The latter word is rather clumsy to pronounce, anyway, and I suppect it will bec considered archiac in the not-to-distant future. I have no personal preference, in fact I see no point since language evolves anyway and different cultures use words in different ways. Say "do not drive on the pavement" to an American and she will look at you as if you are out of your mind! Unless she lives in Philadelphia that is, which case she will say "Duh, obviously!" Anyway, just a few general observations. Jubilee♫clipman 19:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Further, Since there are a growing number of abbreviations like RAF that could be either pronounced or spelt, there is an argument that the distinction is becoming obsolete. Jubilee♫clipman 20:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Cross

Should the X for "cross" feature in the list somewhere? Eg, CX for cyclocross, XC for cross-country, Xmas for Christmas...Stevage 10:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Delmarva

I've removed "Delmarva" (the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia peninsula) as an example in the lead paragraph, which used to say, "Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux or Delmarva)."

Including Delmarva contradicts the definition. "These components" referenced in the second sentence are the "initial components" of the first sentence. "VA" is not an initial component of "Virginia", so by the definition given in the first sentence, Delmarva is not an acronym for Delaware-Maryland-Virginia. Dricherby (talk) 00:24, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Macronyms, Recursive Acronyms and RAS

I'm trying to get this right in my head, but I can't really see the difference between the Macronyms and Recursive Acronym categories. The definition given at [5.6 Macronyms] is:

macronym is an acronym in which one or more letters stand for acronyms themselves. A special case of a macronym is the recursive acronym, which directly or indirectly refers to itself when expanded.

and when you activate that link to recursive acronym you find the definition:

A recursive acronym … is an acronym that refers to itself in the expression for which it stands.

and as both definitions appear to be the same, I'm don't know what the difference between them is.

For that matter, how are either of these terms to be differentiated from RAS? --Myles325a (talk) 04:22, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

In a Macronyms one of the letters stands for some other acronym. E.g. POWER, which stands for "Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC", RISC itself standing for Reduced Instruction Set Computing. So it's one acronym within another. In a recursive acronym, one letter stands for the acronym itself, e.g. GNU which stands for "GNUs Not Unix". So POWER is a macronym, but not a recursive acronym. --Muhandes (talk) 10:10, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

And as for the RAS syndrome, it deals with something completely unrelated. It deals with the case where an acronym includes a word, but people tend to add it again outside the acronym. For example people say "ATM machine". But ATM already stands for "automated teller machine", but people tend to add "machine" again. --Muhandes (talk) 10:13, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Merger of Pseudo-acronym

This is to be merged here somehow (copy and paste what's worth merging with a wikilink to the old article in the edit summary, then change the old article to a redirect. As the article to be merged is shorter than the section here, if you don't count the examples, and there are examples in the section here, I suggest we don't need to do anything but redirect the article to be merged to the relevant section of this article. Dougweller (talk) 16:54, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Support. I looked at the article and I completely agree. If anyone wants to develop the coverage of the topic further, they have plenty of space to do it within this section for a while to come. If they ever develop enough content to spin off into a separate article again (if indeed the topic ever warrants that), they can easily do it at that time. As of now, this merge is the correct move. — ¾-10 18:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Time Is My Everything

Time Is My Everything is a song by British Musician Ian Brown - the the acronym of the title is of course T.I.M.E. - I feel like theres a place for this on this page but not sure where it should go.

He also released a song called F.E.A.R. in which he sings a series of different phrases that use these initials, for example:

For each a road, For everyman a religion, Find everybody and rule, For everything a reason, Freeing excellence affects reality, Find earth and reap, Fantastic expectations Amazing revelations, Final execution and resurrection, Free expression as revolution

Again I don't know where it should go.

What about acronyms that throw in the second letter of some words in lower case, to make it more pronounceable?

Like CHiPs? - JefiKnight (talk) 03:19, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the principle is already covered in the article by the discussion of the variations of first-letter-of-each-component-word vs first-several-letters or first-syllable. E.g., Benelux is mentioned, and others. But if you see a way to add an entry under "Comparing a few examples of each type" that is qualitatively different enough to warrant at least a mention, I think you should go for it. — ¾-10 16:01, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Clarifying my comment—I think you may be right that the article hasn't yet covered the fine distinction between "Benelux" or "laser" versus "CHiPs" (the latter of which gives a clue to its subtle "differentness" by the fact that it retains its caps—slightly closer cognitively to a "regular" acronym). But I lack time to investigate this with a renewed close reading and analysis. So if you get a chance, I encourage you to do that. It would be good to think of another 1 or 2 examples to bolster "CHiPs". I am quite positive that dozens of other examples exist, but I can't think of any at the moment, off the top of my head. — ¾-10 16:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

See CamelCase. Chemical Engineer (talk) 17:12, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

WWW

I notice no mention of 'www' and I'd suggest that explaining the syllable count for saying "double u double u double u" is actually longer than saying the thing it abbreviates "World wide web" is probably noteworthy. Indeed shorter again would be "wuh wuh wuh" which I think the internation phonetic alphabet would convey as [wʌwʌwʌ] And are there any other that could be included in a section on 'ones that take longer to say that the thing they a supposed to be short for'? Obviously that probably needs a more catchy title :) EdwardLane (talk) 08:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

You're right that that's an interesting topic ('ones that take longer to say [than] the thing they [are] supposed to be short for'). It's interesting because of the "write"-versus-"say" distinction. Although "www" is shorter to write than is "World Wide Web", it is longer to say. Which makes one daydream re kinds of communication that are primarily written and how they differ from ones where speech plays a more common part. For example, I use the word "re" in writing often, because it's short to type and readily understood by the reader, yet I resist using it in my speech, because it sounds eccentric if you do. Interesting to think about. — ¾-10 01:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Removed a site from External Links section

The reason I removed the link from the section was because its not only identical in purpose to the other sites, but does not have as many acronyms, making it not as useful. NORAD, GTFO, LMAO, D&D (not an Acronym I know, but the others still returned many hits for this), and these are the common ones I could think of. With the more 'exotic' acrnoyms (BATA, for instance) only about half of the acronyms I could think of had a result on this website, but every acronym I typed in turned up a hit in the other sites. This is why I removed it. The sites already there are much more useful to the reader, so I don't think it would be good to crowd the External Links section with sites that are not as useful. - SudoGhost (talk) 02:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

What about Consonantal Acronyms?

For example, VMR could stand for Ave Maria as only the consonants form the letters in the acronym. My company's name is VMR Communications where VMR stands for Ave Maria. Perfectiix (talk) 20:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. Don't know if anyone has studied them in English, but I'd bet a box of donuts that the topic is worth exploring in Hebrew and Arabic, which, as I understand it, often don't signal vowels orthographically at all. — ¾-10 01:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Chinese numerals

Another example is the number system. "一" (one), "二" (two), "三" (three), "四" (four), "五" (five), "六" (six), "七" (seven), "八" (eight), "九" (nine) and "十" (ten) are widely used but the original Chinese characters are: "壹" (one), "貳" (two), "叁" (three), "肆" (four), "伍" (five), "陸" (six), "柒" (seven), "捌" (eight), "玖" (nine) and "拾" (ten).

The more complex characters are used to discourage alteration by forgers; it's very unlikely that they preceded the simpler. Anyway, this passage does not fit the paragraph, so I'll yank it. —Tamfang (talk) 16:48, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Acronyms with "mute" letters

Didn't find that in the article, so I just thought I'd mention it here: DiSEqC from the satellite TV world. Pronounced "dye-seck" which "melts" the Q and the C to one letter. A very interesting acronym, which formerly had me pronounce it "dye-seck-see" 217.50.58.41 (talk) 19:15, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Removing an external link

This reason has not changed, and the IP that is continiously inserting the link has provided no explanation as to the contrary. It looks as though each acronym I said wasn't on there has been added by the same user, but the site remains subpar with those already listed. The link falls under WP:ELNO #1, as any of the links already present in the article provide more useful information. I would also say it falls under WP:ELNO #4, since it is being spammed without discussion, and #5, since it has advertising, and the sites already available in the article have none. - SudoGhost 12:07, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SudoGhost's removal of the link. This anon is clearly being a dick by putting it back in repeatedly without comment, trying to get it to stick eventually via watchlisters not happening to catch it. This person is most likely trying to misuse Wikipedia as a conduit or portal to drive web search traffic to their own site, increasing the amount of money they can get for their ads. If this behavior continues I will bother to look up how to get this IP address blocked from editing and to get their URL blacklisted such that trying to save an edit containing it will not work. — ¾-10 16:14, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

X

The article states: "The term acronym is the name for a word created from the first letters of each word in a series of words". This definition apparently does not cover the cases when "X" is used for words starting wit "ex" (like in "XML" — "eXtensible ...") and "cross" (see above). Does it mean that the given definition is incomplete, or that such "abbreviations" should be called somehow differently? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 10:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

At the very start of the article is "Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word". XML is pronounced "ex". Elsewhere definitions are cited from other sources such as the OED and American Speech. Wikipedia is a secondary source reporting what others have done: it does not provide authoritative definitions itself. Chemical Engineer (talk) 16:36, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Does someone know how acronyms, 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)

What about translating acronyms and other 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 "z. B." (zum Beispiel, "for example") and "d. h." (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)

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)

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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)

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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)

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)

Proposal regarding usage of term "initialism" on Wikipedia

FYI, I have started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive 103#Deprecation_of_disproportionate_usage_of_.22initialism.22_on_Wikipedia. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

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) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorthea Glenn (talk • contribs)

Gotcha, this time you didn't say "don't ask" ... —Tamfang (talk) 06:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Compliments to the chefs

This is an article that I've enjoyed reading. It's lively and provided me with new knowledge. Good job, all. Wordreader (talk) 21:23, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

German

German tends toward acronyms that use syllables rather than letters

This is actually debatable. It may be true that the use of initial syllables instead of initial letters is more common in German than it is in other languages, especially English, but it is definitely not the case in a vast number of German acronyms.

The German hip hop song MfG – mit freundlichen Grüßen by Die Fantastischen Vier could be seen as a 'reference' for common German initialisms. The song features a plethora of mostly (probably due to meter considerations) three-letter initialisms.

One common origin of German acronyms is German law, which traditionally assigns an acronym to every statute. While the most basic and oldest statutes are assigned initialisms, in order to avoid ambiguity, lawmakers had to resort to the use of initial syllables for some more recent statutes, e.g. BGB or HGB vs. MautSysG, MBergG, or, as an more drastic example, SchErsRÄndG. A special case are syllables/words beginning with the letter S, as those syllables/words historically were, and sometimes still are, categorized into, and consequently abbreviated as, S/Sch/St depending on the initial sound(s); see for example StGB, StUG, SchKG.

69.204.226.4 (talk) 07:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

The section has been tweaked in light of what you pointed out. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

apronym not mentioned

Shouldn't apronyms be mentioned here as well (see Nominative determinism)? --84.59.118.48 (talk) 13:59, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Don't see why. They don't involve acronymy. The only way to connect them (that I see at the moment) could be if someone's initials are apronymous, in which case you'd have an acronymous apronym, or an apronymous acronym. But such creatures must surely be rare indeed. Maybe like when a Mr. I.P. Freely publishes an article on urology? Or a Mr. Marvin A. Dougherty an article on anger management? ;-) Quercus solaris (talk) 23:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

"Alphabet" as acronym

The word "alphabet", which was recently removed by Altenmann, appears to fit the category "Pronounced as a word, containing non-initial letters", and as a Greek word fits the category "Pronounced only as a string of letters". I recognize that it's not as clear cut an example as some of the others, but I don't see why it needed to be blanked, especially given its significance as one of the oldest known acronyms. Ibadibam (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

You failed to answer my two objections from edit summaries:

• (a) acromym must be abbreviated from something: Nabisco stands for National Biscuit Company. Now, what does 'alphabet' stand for? If you say it stands for Alpha Beta, we are good :-)
• (B') what's more important, references, please.
• (c) "you don't see" something in this case is probably because you see only what you want to see and don't see the argument of the opponent and hence do not address it. - Altenmann >t 08:46, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

• (a) Yes
• (b) There was already a source cited for the etymology of the word. If that source does not satisfy (which may be reasonable—I haven't looked that closely at it), the usual course of action is to add a maintenance tag or just go ahead and improve it. Of the approaches available to us as editors, these are more productive and collaborative than deleting content.

Ibadibam (talk) 09:03, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

(b)The source does not say it is an acronym. - Altenmann >t 04:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

(a) Yes what? 'Alphabet' is an acronym for a chain of American supermarkets? - Altenmann >t 04:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

According to etymonline.com, "alphabet" comes from the Greek "alphabetos" - literally the combination of "alpha" and "beta". An interesting fact, but I would argue that it's a compound word, not an acronym. 2602:306:BCF1:94B0:55A0:7C9A:D76B:EB0F (talk) 22:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Is there a term for acronyms that don't mean the same thing as the phrase that makes them up?

This is mainly an open question to those who are knowledgeable in this subject, but if the term does exist it might be useful to include it in the article. Basically, I'm referring to things like: "PC", which is popularly used to describe computers that specifically run the Windows operating system even though the phrase itself, "Personal Computer", is a neutral description of any computing device; or "UFO", which is used to describe possible spacecraft flown by extraterrestrials, even though "Unidentified Flying Object" is a broad term that refers to anything in the sky that can't be properly identified. Is there a category that acronyms and initialisms like this fit under? Or am I making a novel observation here? Thanks! ZbeeblebroxIV (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Redundant acronym?

The article gives "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" as an example of a "redundant acronym", but I doubt that it is. I think the colon makes all the difference. 86.160.217.154 (talk) 02:18, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Different main definitions

I am new to this article, so this may have been said before, but it now has two different main definitions as if there were two leads. The lead says "An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word", while the first sentence in Nomenclature says "The term acronym is the name for a word formed from the first letters of each word in a phrase". The two definitions should be brought into line with each other. The later text explains this difference but rather too late. Myrvin (talk) 07:43, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

The lede is already self-consistent using the broad sense of the word. It does not attempt to be the nomenclature section, nor should it, and that is why it is as short and high-level as it is. It is true that the nomenclature section should be improved to explain better that two senses exist without first asserting one of them as if it is the only one. An example where such an ontological issue is handled better is at Great Recession#Terminology. That section explicitly states up front that there are two senses. I will see about improving this later this week. — ¾-10 02:05, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

OK. I am also worried by the part which says "formed from the initial components in a phrase or a word". Can it be formed from the initial components of one word? Perhaps "or a word" should be deleted. Myrvin (talk) 10:42, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

I would suggest for the lead: "An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial components in a phrase. The resulting abbreviation is often to be read as a word itself, but might also be expressed with its letters individually spoken. ref OED. Myrvin (talk) 10:48, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

This book by Bauer [7] seems to be a useful source. Myrvin (talk) 13:27, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Acronyms and abbreviations

I am confused about how this article connects to Abbreviation. Because this article often does not distinguish between them, it goes into detail about what would be of interest for general abbreviations: plurals, punctuation etc. Oddly the article on abbreviations goes into less detail about these. Myrvin (talk) 15:22, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Acronyms are a subset of abbreviations. Which is to say, the word acronym is a hyponym of the word abbreviation. Which is to say, whereas an abbreviation is any shortened form (truncated, contracted, or otherwise), acronyms (ie, acronyms and initialisms) are those that are shortened in a particular set of ways. You are right that some reorg of those areas would be an improvement (may include some info moving from this article to that article). — ¾-10 23:19, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Software for automated extraction of acronyms from text

I suggest to add a link to MAX - My Acronym eXtractor. It's an OSX App that my company has put on the OSX App store to help writers find acronyms automatically. I put a link into the "External Links" section yesterday, but it was removed. I do think that automated extraction of acronyms is within the scope of this page. It is a topic that is relevant for many writers (which I assume constitute the bulk of the visitors of this page). We see a lot of people waste a lot of time by creating lists of acronyms manually. It adds a lot of stress, for example when you are about to submit your thesis, and you still have to collect all those @!$% acronyms manually. I would assume that others who have developed similar programs might like to add their links, too, but I am not aware of any other publicly available solutions for this problem. Advanced users have been known to write their own macros in word, but sharing those has become widely unpopular after the virus outbreak in the early 2000s that was associated with such macros. Thanks for considering! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spaddock (talk • contribs) 14:45, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Choice of Illustration

This article spends quite some time on the different definitions of acronym (being either an abbreviation or a word), and then chooses to illustrate this with an image that only applies to abbreviations. (NYPD) I would strongly suggest to use LASER, RADAR or a similar acronym for the illustration, since this applies to both the narrow and wide definition of the term. The current illustration seems self-defeating.