It's a sore spot for me. Many years ago when I took my first job as a federal contractor I tried to maintain a notebook to keep track of all the acronyms I kept coming across. After completely filling that notebook I gave up and developed an intense hatred for acronyms. Exceptions are allowed for things that have where the acronym has supplanted the actual phrase it represents, like IP address or DNS, but if it isn't at that level then you really should just spell things out rather than assuming people know what you're referencing.
That's not even the tip of the iceberg that is the federal government's acronym fetish. It's genuinely upsetting how many things get turned into acronyms. I am not being even slightly hyperbolic when I say I filled an entire notebook.
My shop writing guide included instruction to spell it out once, then list the acronym, and use the acronym (or initialism) afterwards. I don't know if it was something the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Marine Corps (USMC), or something specific to how our customers wanted our product presented, but it seemed like a good system. You never have to leave the document you're reading to find out what an acronym stands for, and you still get most of the space savings.
Oh, and if you were going to use a term once, don't bother with the acronym at all (broken for illustrative purposes above).
The reason for them is because specialized technical fields need them to communicate complex ideas quickly. Especially if you have to use the same few terms over and over again.
Management types adopted this because they think they sound smart like the techies when they spout off a mouthful of acronyms. Bonus points if you have to ask what an acronym means and they can act smug that they knew it and you didn't.
It's a sore spot for me. Many years ago when I took my first job as a federal contractor I tried to maintain a notebook to keep track of all the acronyms I kept coming across. After completely filling that notebook I gave up and developed an intense hatred for acronyms. Exceptions are allowed for things that have where the acronym has supplanted the actual phrase it represents, like IP address or DNS, but if it isn't at that level then you really should just spell things out rather than assuming people know what you're referencing.
Can't imagine why, with all the noble acronyms: FBI, CIA, NSA, LGBTP
That's not even the tip of the iceberg that is the federal government's acronym fetish. It's genuinely upsetting how many things get turned into acronyms. I am not being even slightly hyperbolic when I say I filled an entire notebook.
Yeah, when I started EOD during my first week (before I was on TDY), the SPOs all joined our group to work on our SOPs for the PDB (nt).
Got a good chuckle from this, even if I could only decipher half of it. You know what's up.
gg
My shop writing guide included instruction to spell it out once, then list the acronym, and use the acronym (or initialism) afterwards. I don't know if it was something the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Marine Corps (USMC), or something specific to how our customers wanted our product presented, but it seemed like a good system. You never have to leave the document you're reading to find out what an acronym stands for, and you still get most of the space savings.
Oh, and if you were going to use a term once, don't bother with the acronym at all (broken for illustrative purposes above).
The reason for them is because specialized technical fields need them to communicate complex ideas quickly. Especially if you have to use the same few terms over and over again.
Management types adopted this because they think they sound smart like the techies when they spout off a mouthful of acronyms. Bonus points if you have to ask what an acronym means and they can act smug that they knew it and you didn't.
A university I went to had three separate Mates, two of which were building no where near each other.