[whatwg] whatwg Digest, Vol 33, Issue 90 (Krzysztof ?elechowski)

You may be right but this theory seems to be very specific to the
English language.  For example, you silently assume that "URL" is an
abbreviation; acronyms like "ZUS" or "PKO" are not considered to be
abbreviations in Polish.  The term "initialism" is stranger to HTML so
this distinction is essential for academic linguistic papers only;
Aspell does not even recognise this word.  However, the distinction
between an acronym and an abbreviation is clear and intuitive.

Chris

Dnia 12-12-2007, ?r o godzinie 22:29 +0000, Sam Kuper pisze:
> Dear Chris,
> 
> Your classifications are incorrect, as is your rule of thumb. The
> following excerpt should clarify things:
> 
> "Initialism[s] originally described abbreviations formed from
> initials, without reference to pronunciation. ... [Some people]
> differentiate between the [terms 'acronym' and 'initialism'],
> restricting 'acronym' to pronounceable words formed from the initial
> letters of the constituent words, and using 'initialism' ... for
> abbreviations pronounced as the names of the individual letters. In
> the latter usage, examples of proper acronyms would be 'NATO' ... and
> 'radar' ..., while examples of initialisms would include 'FBI' ... and
> 'HTML'...
> 
> There is no agreement on what to call abbreviations whose
> pronunciation involves the combination of letter names and words, such
> as 'JPEG' ... and 'MS-DOS' ... . These abbreviations are sometimes
> described as acronym?initialism hybrids...
> 
> There is also no agreement as to what to call abbreviations that some
> pronounce as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the
> internet term 'URL' can be pronounced as individual letters or as a
> single word."
> 
> (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A?cronym_and_initialism)
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Sam
> 
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Krzysztof ?elechowski <giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl>
> > To: Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:20:56 +0100
> > Subject: Re: [whatwg] whatwg Digest, Vol 33, Issue 90
> >
> > Dnia 12-12-2007, ?r o godzinie 08:59 +0000, Ian Hickson pisze:
> > > Most people don't mark up abbreviations or acronyms at all, they only mark
> > > them up at all to give the expansions generally. And for this purpose, it
> > > doesn't really matter which is which (not to mention that different
> > > people disagree on which is which -- I say "ess quere ell" and "ewe are
> > > ell", others say "sequel" and "earl").
> >
> > "SQL" and "URL" are acronyms because they are built from initial
> > letters.
> > "Mr.", "Dr.", "Ch." and "cf." are abbreviations.
> > "i.e." and "etc." are... er... abbreviations?
> > Except for these cases, I hardly see any valid disagreement.  A rule of
> > thumb is that abbreviations are usually written with a dot.
> > Chris

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 15:56:01 UTC