From: lange@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Alex Lange)
Subject: Proper Use of Acronyms (was Re: Apostrophes in Plural forms?)
Reply-To: lange@lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space, Sunnyvale CA USA
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 14:26:10 GMT

charlie@umnstat.stat.umn.edu (Charles Geyer) writes:
: srinivas@lips.ecn.purdue.edu (The Abode of Wealth) writes:
: 
: >              Using the full form is not an alternative here because
: > I am using abbreviations of long technical phrases and it is very tedious to
: > use the full forms a hundred times.
: 
: In article <1992Nov18.141032.26433@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com>
: lange@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
: 
: > That's the one most legitimate reason for acronyms.
: 
: No. It's not.  People managed perfectly well before acronyms to say what
: they meant.  Even scientists managed.  

Ah, but even scientists must have seen some value in the use of "initialisms"
in their proper context and with a clear understanding of their audience
(as you point out in your last paragraph, below).  Imagine the periodic
table of the elements without the abbreviated names of elements... 
(not entirely analogous, I admit).

:                                        The indigestible alphabet soup that
: is much of today's scientific and technical writing is completely unnecessary.

I completely agree that it is over- and misused, but still contend that
it has a legitimate use.

: 
: From van Leunen's Handbook for Scholars
: 
:   Initialisms and Acronyms
: 
:   With initial mania everywhere, it would be surprising if no scholars
:   were infected.  Treat the disease with a dose of plain old-fashioned
:   words:
: 
:   [wrong] Negotiations then began between the Cooperative Wholesalers
:           Society (CWS) and the Milk Producers Revenue Board (MPRB).
:           The CWS wanted price supports; the MPRB wanted free competition.
: 
:   [right] Negotiations then began between the Cooperative Wholesalers
:           Society and the Milk Producers Revenue Board.  The wholesalers
:           wanted price supports; the producers wanted free competition.

Much better, I agree, but what does van Leunen say about the rest of
the writing, that is, all the text that follows this one lone paragraph?
Would it be best to keep repeating "wholesalers" and "producers" throughout?
We need to know the larger context and audience.

: 
: One can do without acronyms if one tries, unless, of course, it is required
: by government red tape, or unless the whole field has gone so bonkers about
: initialisms that there's no hope left.  I confess that I wouldn't know what
: to replace TCP/IP with, or AIDS. 

But if you were writing about network protocols or current medical crises,
you would _have_ to use these acronyms to speak cogently to an understanding
audience.

:                                   The best one can to in a field where the
: disease is epidemic is to avoid it as much as one can.
: 
: I confess I use them myself, but never more than two or three distinct
: initialisms in a single paper, 

A blessing that you don't _have_ to deal with more than two three
at a time.

:                                and usually ones that will be familiar
: to most of my readers (DNA, CLT, MLE).

And after you intoduce the abbreviationa, you use them throughout your
entire paper, correct? I completely agree that this is the most important
consideration in whether to use acronyms or not: your audience.  I made
the assumption that srinivas@lips.ecn.purdue.edu's audience, too, was
familiar with the abbreviations he used.

Used wisely, acronyms can _include_ your reader; used blindly, they will
alienate.  They can either entirely obscure your writing or greatly speed
it up.

Alex Lange
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english