RE: Acronyms & Abbreviations--Just Say NO!

["Anita Legsdin" <anita -dot- legsdin -at- watchmark -dot- com>]

I agree, even though I hate acronyms and will rewrite sentences to avoid
using them. Acronyms are definitely useful when something has a real
name that's too cumbersome to use (HTML, for example, or SNMP, or IEEE
or STC). However, I've seen specs written by software engineers full of
sentences like "The software package (SP)..." followed by references to
"SP" rather than "the software" or "the program". To me, this is just
nuts. And, is it really necessary to use QCC (quality control
committee), instead of just saying "the committee" (as long as everyone
knows which committee we're speaking of)? 

When people ask me what an acronym means (and I don't know), one of my
favorite games is to respond with the first thing that pops in my head,
instead of researching what it actually stands for. To my horror, I am
often right.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dick Margulis  [SMTP:margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net]
> Sent:	Monday, June 16, 2003 8:16 AM
> To:	TECHWR-L
> Subject:	Re: Acronyms & Abbreviations--Just Say NO!
> 
> 
> It's all a question of figuring out what your audience expects and is
> comfortable with, and the choices you make are going to vary from one
> kind of document for a given audience and another kind of document for
> the same or a different audience.
> 
Anita Legsdin
Sr. Technical Writer
WatchMark
(425) 564-8135




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