RE: ABBR and ACRONYM

On 1/30/1998 08:43 AM, Pawson, David wrote:

>There are probably better examples in esoteric fields full of jargon.
><acronym>IT</acronym> is just such a field. Someone not 
>familiar with the field may not recognise <acronym>RAM</acronym>
>as a computer term and interpret as a sheepish item.

Apologies, but this strikes me as a really neat problem.  For many 
acronyms a simple check of the phonemics (?) can determine whether it 
should be parsed as a word or as 'letter-spelling'.  Other acronyms may 
require interpretation once or always:  'RAM', for instance, might be 
read as 'Random Access Memory' the first time [with a little client-level 
semantic sugaring:  "...Random Access Memory, known as RAM,...".  I 
assume the tag supports a reference to the full word?

Matt.

Received on Friday, 30 January 1998 10:24:41 UTC