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Subject:Re: Acronyms, abbreviations and initalisms From:arroxaneullman -at- aol -dot- com To:dtinsley -at- ndigital -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:05:50 -0500
David,
Wikiepedia says the following under both terms:
Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations such as NATO, laser, or
scuba, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and
pronounced based on this abbreviated written form.
Of the two words, "acronym" is the much more frequently used and known,
and some dictionaries, speakers and writers use it when referring to
all abbreviations formed from initial letters. However, this is a
contentious point, and there are also some (including the Oxford
English Dictionary) who differentiate between the two terms. These
state that an acronym is a pronounceable word formed from the initial
letter or letters of each of the constituent words, such as
NATO[ne?to?], from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or RADAR
[re?d??], from RAdio Detection And Ranging, while an initialism refers
to an abbreviation pronounced as the names of the individual letters,
such as TLA [ti.?l.e?] or XHTML.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Tinsley <dtinsley -at- ndigital -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:23:13 -0500
Subject: Acronyms, abbreviations and initalisms
Am I the only person who gets irritated when initalisms are
incorrectly
described as acronyms? The distinction is quite obvious and simple and
yet time after time I see lists of "acronyms" that are initialisms and
this from technical communicators. The latest example I have just seen
is on the last page of April 06 Intercom magazine.
Just a Friday rant!
David
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