Re: Spelling out, was Acronyms

["Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net>]

Speaking as someone who DOES remember what ASCII stands for (not to mention Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) and Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC), who also knows that COmmon Business Oriented Language (COBOL) was developed by the COmmittee for DAta SYstem Languages (CODASYL), who learned Symbolic Processing System (SPS), FORmula TRANslation (FORTRAN), and ALgebra Oriented Language (ALGOL) before most list members were born, I gotta say I'm on your side on this one. ;-)

By the way, I understand the the protocol used to communicate between scanners and PCs, TWAIN, is an acronym for Technology Without An Interesting Name. If that's true, I'd probably want to spell it out in a manual just for the fun of it.


>I'd be curious on other comments on this.  Even in a technical document for not-necessarily-technical end users, would you say:
>
>"This mail program uses only ASCII text, meaning the standard characters on your keyboard." 
>
>or
>
>"This mail program uses only American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text, meaning the standard characters on your keyboard."
>
>>

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