Russell,

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 00:55:14 +1300, Russell McMahon wrote:

> It's not uncommon to "say" acronyms as a word. In fact, there are some
> acronyms that are (essentially) never said EXCEPT as a word. No doubt many
> are designed that way - a mix of useful words is tossed about until a
> euphonically acceptable "word" is arrived at.

As I understand it, an acronym is a *word* formed from initials, like BASIC, COBOL, LASER, RADAR, NASA, NATO,
ANZAC, UNCLE and these are different from just using the initials on their own, like IBM, SAS, VCR, ICBM, BSE,
HST and that these are abbreviations, not acronyms.

> An example to make the point is "L.A.S.E.R."
> Nobody would EVER call this a ell ay ess ee ar.
> "Lazer" is the only game in town (or maybe somewhat different in other
> ;anguages than English-English :-)

As long as you don't *spell* it with a "Z" because that's wrong - you can't change the spelling of an acronym!

> But it is, of course, an acronym for  Light Amplification (by) Stimulated Emission (of) Radiation.

Quite!

I always think it's cheating a bit to miss words out, the worst example being POWER (an IBM spooling and
job-control system from the System/370 days).  Anyone remember what the whole thing was?

> So I suspect that Ell Ee Dee or LED are both acceptable.

I beg to differ - I think it sounds awful to pronounce it as a word.  Although you can, it grates with me the
same as does pronouncing "IBM" as a word.

> Can we think of other acronyms that are never spelt out?
> Maybe NASA, UNESCO, NATO, ANZAC (only meaningful down-under (if there, these
> days))...

The ones listed above, plus BENELUX, EFTA, SCSI, and a lot of computer languages (Algol, FORTRAN, SNOBOL...).
Anyone know why most acronymic computer languages are spelled with capitals, but Algol isn't?

> Note that U.N. & the one time U.S.S.R. are ALWAYS spelt out :-)

Similarly UK and USA.  Some of these, of course, would be difficult to pronounce anyway (or ugly, UK for
example!).

Incidentally, what is the correct way to pronounce "GNU"?

> I once designed a MATILDA
> (Microprocessor AMR Tape Incremental Loading data Analyser)
> AMR is itself an acronym so maybe it should have been a MAMRTILDA :-)
> This read a 7 track 1/2" reel to reel digital data deck using a 6802!
> microprocessor by implementing a GPIB subset. I was very proud of it at the
> time.

It didn't waltz, then?  :-)

Cheers,

Howard Winter

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