'The 10 worst acronyms if you're a pedant (grrr)' blog discussion

Mista_C

Our department had a new director brought in to modernise the IT department. The first thing on his agenda was to divide us into teams.

The servers and networking cabling would be the responsibility of the Network Information Technology Services.

Voice communications would be placed under the Telephony Information Technology Services.

Day-to-day support was provided by the General Information Technology Services.

His final modernisation was to make sure we all used the initialised versions of our team names as our email signature. e.g.

John Smith
NITS

The Support Helpdesk Information Technology Services team were the least amused by it all. Needless to say he wasn't there for very long before he got moved on.

John_Gray

A former ManDir of a large finance company wanted, for unknown and unfathomable reasons, to change the name of the Organisation & Methods department (O&M) to Systems & Methods...
The members of the newly-renamed department were delighted to be able to answer the phone with "S&M - can I help you?"...

Hmm71

If we're going to be picky and pedantic then James Moore's tweet at the end of Martin's blog, about MOT, is also wrong. If James wants it changed to MOTT for Ministry of Transport Test, then it really should be changed to DFTT, for Department for Transport Test. The Ministry of Transport hasn't been around for many, many years.

I hope it doesn't get changed though as taking you car for its DFT will never have quite the same ring to it as the MOT.

Brian_Steele

Sadly for me, someone beat me to it, but it bears being repeated. Most (all?) of the examples were not acronyms, they were just initialisations. An acronym is actually a word (and pronounced as such), not a set of initial letters.

SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) is an acronym, while GPS is not. OPEC is perhaps a slightly grey area, although still not really an acronym, because it is not a real word, even if it is pronounced as one.

Also, "ABS system" is another good example of a tautological abbreviation. When I worked in design at Land Rover, in the department responsible for ABS, we used to fine people every time they used tautologies such as this. Maybe I should introduce that where I am now.

powerjohn

... it should be "worst 10", not "10 worst". There's only one worst of anything.

RaspberryFool

As two other people have already picked up on the point that most of the examples are not acronyms, I shall not spend any more time on the subject. However, I have long wondered why some people create these acronyms that come into common use but, because others do not understand them, they end up repeating the words in them - as per many of the examples. Another example that crops up frequently, especially on news articles, is HIV Virus. One of the worst examples I heard was a police inspector discussing fraud with credit and debit cards and referred to a 'Personal PIN Number'.

Martin, the next time you are on Radio 2, please have a word with the news readers and stop them perpetuating this bad habit!

Slightly changing the subject, I do wonder why they bothered to come up with the abbreviation 'www' that people discuss when it takes three times as many syllables to pronounce than simply saying 'world wide web'.

wozearly

RaspberryFool wrote: »

As two other people have already picked up on the point that most of the examples are not acronyms, I shall not spend any more time on the subject. However, I have long wondered why some people create these acronyms that come into common use but, because others do not understand them, they end up repeating the words in them - as per many of the examples. Another example that crops up frequently, especially on news articles, is HIV Virus. One of the worst examples I heard was a police inspector discussing fraud with credit and debit cards and referred to a 'Personal PIN Number'.

Martin, the next time you are on Radio 2, please have a word with the news readers and stop them perpetuating this bad habit!

Slightly changing the subject, I do wonder why they bothered to come up with the abbreviation 'www' that people discuss when it takes three times as many syllables to pronounce than simply saying 'world wide web'.

I agree that the needless restatment of part of the acronym/initialisation is primarily down to genuine, or perceived, lack of understanding on the part of the listener.

Reintroducing a redundant word helps to ensure clarity on what is being referred to - PIN number and EHIC card leap out as fairly good examples. The problem is that after a few people start doing this, phrases like "PIN number" start to be used more widely, to the point where they can become as common, or more common, than the acronym being used correctly.

At this point, society seems to assume that the clearer / more intuitive / more widely used version is the correct one. My guess is that most people would get confused if you asked about their PI number, their EHI card, or their GP system.

Given that its accepted that language evolves (unless you're an English teacher), I think this is ultimately a battle that pedants will lose. But full credit to anyone willing to fight a rearguard action for the English language being used as originally intended.

Money_Saving_Dude

wanchai wrote: »

I also agree with the MOT point, have said that for years! :rolleyes:

No, MOT is an abbreviation of the phrase 'MOT test."

More to the point, what about wrong plurals?

formula becomes formulae, NOT formulas
stadium becomes stadia, NOT stadiums
criterion is the singular of criteria, so criteria IS PLURAL

There are loads of words like this.

And then there is the apostrophe...

EmehEm2005

It all started in the 13th century...
Pendle Hill, located in the east of Lancashire, is located in an area known as Pendleside.
Pendle Hill combines the words for hill from three different languages, as does Bredon Hill in Worcestershire. In the 13th century it was called Pennul or Penhul, apparently from the Cumbric pen and Old English hyll, both meaning "hill". The modern English "hill" was appended later, after the original meaning of Pendle had become opaque, although traditionalist locals insist on "Pendle".

esuhl

Money_Saving_Dude wrote: »

More to the point, what about wrong plurals?

formula becomes formulae, NOT formulas
stadium becomes stadia, NOT stadiums
criterion is the singular of criteria, so criteria IS PLURAL

What about incorrect corrections?!

The words "formulas" and "stadiums" are perfectly legitimate according to the Cambridge English Dictionary:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/formula_1
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/stadium