From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Apostrophes in Plural forms?
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 03:51:18 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.000146.6117@news2.cis.umn.edu> 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.  

But they were perverse souls who decided to obfuscate just for the hell
of it, right?   I think not.  Instead, things may have gotten a little
more complicated on the scientific front, and the expressions used to
describe complicated things and process just got too long.  

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

COuld you supply us with a good example?  Or, better yet, if it's completely
unnecessary, we'll supply *you* with one, which you can then translate for us.

Do you really want to write out "maximum likelihood" or "best linear unbiased
estimator" or "Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test" every time?  Nor do you, I bet.

>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:

[classic example of rudeness in a style manual: no interest in *why* people
do it, ergo no understanding]

>  [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.

[I guess we're going to ahve to wait for the scientific/technical example...]

>  [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.

Well, so much for literalness and precision.  van Leunen's solution seems to
be metonymy, which is not always appropriate, *especially* in sci/tech 
writing. 

Note also what happens in a somewhat longer example, i.e., an actual text in
which such a sentence would occur.  There might be mention of the 
wholesalers themselves, and likewise of the producers, not just of the
agencies that represent them.  Now what?  Now you can't say "the producers"
when you mean the MPRB, because they're not the same thing.  You might
say "the producers' board," but why do that when you've already named the 
board?  MPRB is the name of the board; "the producers" is a movie with Zero
Mostel, oops, I mean it's the set of producers who sponsor the Board, and
perhaps some others besides.  

Try writing a 20-graf newspaper article on such a topic using van Leunen's
advice.  Then repeat the exercise with a technical report.

>One can do without acronyms if one tries, unless, of course, it is required
>by government red tape, 

Ah, *there*s the culprit.  It had to be the government.  

>or unless the whole field has gone so bonkers about
>initialisms that there's no hope left.  

Hope for what?  Didn't the people who introduced the acronyms and
initialisms do so to make their lives (and those of the folks around
them) simpler?  If this hadn't succeeded, would they have continued?

>I confess that I wouldn't know what
>to replace TCP/IP with, or AIDS.  The best one can to in a field where the
>disease is epidemic is to avoid it as much as one can.

"Disease" -- there it is.  When you don't like a phenomenon, don't 
tell us why it's bad, just insult it and those associated with it.  
VAX, PCV valve, MRI scan, the GOP, CBS, the USS Iowa -- you must use
a hundred initialisms and acronyms in a day.  

>I confess I use them myself, but never more than two or three distinct
>initialisms in a single paper, and usually ones that will be familiar
>to most of my readers (DNA, CLT, MLE).

Well, speaking the language of your audience is always a good idea.  
But why don't you find metonymic terms for the Central Limit Theorem,
the way van Leunen suggests?

OK?

RLL


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