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Subject:Acronyms vs. initialisms From:"Roz Ault, Information Technology, X 377" <AULT -at- FAXON -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 20 Nov 1997 13:53:38 -0400
Picky point of usage: MSDS is not an acronym; it is an initialism.
Same with SQL, which (according to an SQL seminar I once attended)
is correctly spoken as Ess Kew Ell, not Sequel.
If you say the individual initials when you speak the abbreviation aloud,
it's an initialism. If you say them as a word (like GUI, SCSI, or UNESCO),
it's an acronym.
(Of course, some examples like MS-DOS are both -- but Microsoft always
makes its own rules anyway.)
