RE: UserFriendly.org: Truth in Acronyms

[Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>]

Willy, Andrew wrote:

> Abbreviations are shortened versions of a word.  ...

Wrong.

"You're" is an abbreviation of _two_ words.

"Ought've" (very bad in the written form, but not unknown in spoken 
English) is an abbreviation of _three_ words, holding _NO_ indication 
of the entirely elided "to".

By extension (almost to the point of exaggeration), "radar" is thus an 
abbreviation of five words.

BUT, it is a special form of multi-word abbreviation, being one that is 
not indicated by punctuation _AND_ that is pronouncable as a word in 
its own right.  For this special class of abbreviations, the term 
"acronym" was coined.

> ...  "Abbr" is an abbreviation
> of abbrevation.

Or not...    8-)

> Acronyms are formed by combining the first letters of several words to form
> one word.
>
> Neither needs to be pronounceable in the real world, ...

That's because of ignorant slippage in the usage.

Just as most "simple folk" call anything that goes wrong with their 
computers a "virus" but you (?) and I would more precisely label as 
"Trojan Horse", "spyware", "mis-configuration", "user error", etc, many 
simple folk make no destinction between what language scholars would 
call an acronym and a (simple) abbreviation (or possibly an 
"initialism" -- a term I must admit I was unaware of until digging into 
the topic of this thread; "you've" is an abbreviation, "IEEE" an 
abbreviation _and_ and initialism, and "radar" both the foregoing and 
an acronym).

> ... as far as I know,
> however when writing HTML it is apparently otherwise.  
>
> > From HTMLhelp.com:
>
> "Unlike other kinds of abbreviations, acronyms are pronounceable words,
> though in some cases the pronunciation is strictly a presentation issue. For
> example, "SQL" and "URL" are pronounced as words by some people and
> pronounced letter-by-letter by others. In such cases, authors should use the
> ABBR element, possibly with a style sheet rule specifying the pronunciation
> for aural rendering."

Features designed (and documented) by folk with at least a smidgeon of 
linguistic sensibility I suspect...


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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