5.10 Acronyms and Abbreviations

Acronyms are formed by taking the initial letters of some or all the words in a phrase or title and pronouncing them as a word. This type of word-formation is prevalent in names of organizations, military, and scientific terminology. Common examples are American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Antisocial Behavior Order (ASBO), frequently asked questions (FAQ), Scholastic Achievement (or Aptitude) Test(s) (SAT), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), Personal Identification Number (PIN), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), random access memory (RAM), very important person (VIP), read only memory (ROM), and others.

In numerous cases, speakers do not realize that they are using an acronym. One example is radar (radio detecting and ranging), which is an acronym common throughout many languages. Other examples of acronyms are scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), and laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). It is widely assumed that the use of text shorthand known as acronyms was started as a result of the use of Morse Code to send and receive messages in the 19th century. Because telegraph companies charged the sender by the word, acronyms were invented to save the sender costs and to quicken the time and effort of the sending agent. Telegraph companies would not only charge by the word but would charge additional fees for numerals and words that could not be easily pronounced. So, acronyms which had no vowels were given vowels so as to make them pronounceable. A good example of this is the apparatus used for Radio Ranging and Detection. To send this collection of words, a sender would be charged for four separate words. Sending RRD would be only one word but charged an extra fee because it was not pronounceable. Sending radar gets the sender charged for only one pronounceable word. Modern society uses acronyms for many of the same reasons as the telegraph companies, e.g. ease of typing and speed of communication, be it on the modern day computer keyboard or the ubiquitous cell phone. Technically, there is a difference between acronyms and abbreviations. This difference becomes vague in many instances and makes it sometimes difficult to assign either word to the usage. While N.A.T.O. would be an abbreviation, it is also an acronym as in NATO. Some scholars distinguish between acronyms and initialisms; however, we do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, preferring the former as an inclusive label.

Abbreviation is a reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence. Abbreviations are societal slangs. They come and go in waves. The reason for abbreviations is linguistic economy. Communicators value succinct language, and abbreviations contribute to concise style. Technological constraints contribute to the use of abbreviations. They also help to convey “a sense of social identity; to use an abbreviated form is to be ‘in the know’—a part of the social group to which the abbreviation belongs” (Crystal, 2005, p.120). Those who are computer savvy will be recognized by their extensive use of abbreviations such as WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get), and other similar abbreviations.

Now abbreviations are part netspeak and textspeak, which is a rapidly emerging jargon used among Internet users. David Crystal has compiled a glossary of netspeak and textspeak, and some examples illustrated here are borrowed from the Glossary: bps (bits per second), four-oh-four [404] (a term identifying an error message shown on screen when a browser makes a faulty request to a server), and others (Crystal, 2004). There are a lot of abbreviations used by “species of spoken shorthand” (Crystal, 2004, p.120): OK (all correct), PDQ (pretty damn quick), GTT (gone to Texas), BTW (by the way), ETA (estimated time of arrival), FYI (for your information), POS (parent over shoulder), ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), RSVP (Répondez s'il vous plait), BRB (Be right back), TTYL (Talk to you later), and others.