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What is your least favourite acronym? (lemmy.nz)

submitted 8 months ago by thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Mine is OOO for Out Of Office. I always misread it in my head like a ghost and it takes me a few seconds to process. It also doesn't translate to speech—you have to say the whole thing.

Interested to see if others have similar acronyms they beef with.

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[-] SuiXi3D@kbin.social 15 points 8 months ago

Not an acronym though, but an initialism. Acronyms are said like a word, like CRISPR, initialisms aren’t, like ATM.

[-] milo128@lemm.ee 43 points 8 months ago

you're being pointlessly pedantic. Initialisms are also considered acronyms by most defimitions and by common use.

[-] Anonymouse@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

I don't think they're being pointlessly pedantic. I've been around POS systems and some people call it by the letters, P.O.S. & others by the acronym, sounding like "pause". Nobody assumes you're talking about a Piece of Shit when you say "pause". Also for OOO ("oooh") vs O.O.O., which doesn't roll off the tongue, but you don't sound like Casper.

Now, being pointlessly pedantic, I find it interesting to think that if we continue to use the word acronym for initialisms, then the word acronym will actually be initialisms! English is weird!

[-] milo128@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

im not saying theres no difference between pronouncing each lettwer and pronouncing the whole thing like a word, just that both are generally considered acronymns so the correction was unnecessary.

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this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024

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