Re: Comment LC-1175: definition of acronym

Hi Gez, All,

At 00:00 16/07/2006, Gez Lemon wrote:
>Hi Ben,
>
>On 10/07/06, Ben Caldwell <caldwell@trace.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>acronym: abbreviation made from the initial letters or parts of a name
>>or phrase that contains several words
>>
>>I think this might address both issue 1175 and the concerns you've
>>described.
>>
>>Thoughts?
>
>That's a definition of an initialism. Acronyms are like initialisms,
>except they can be pronounced as a word. Can we add, "pronounced as a
>word" to the end? Otherwise, can we follow Jason's advice and remove
>the definition from the glossary, as it's not essential to understand
>the difference for accessibility?
>
>acronym:  An abbreviation made from the initial letters or parts of a
>name or phrase that contains several words, pronounced as a word.

When we added the definition of acronym, we did not want to say that
an acronym is always pronounced as a word, because lexicographers don't
seem to agree on this.
The French acronym/initialism O.N.U. (Organisation des Nations Unie:
United Nations) can be pronounced as a word or letter by letter,
depending on the preference of the speaker. So if you want something
about pronunciation in the definition of acronym, you could add
"which *may* be pronounced as a word", resulting in the following:

acronym: abbreviated from made from the initial letters or parts
  of a name or phrase that contains several words and which may be
  pronounced as a word.


(On the other hand, lexicographers never say that initialisms are
pronounced as words.)


Regards,

Christophe


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
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Received on Monday, 17 July 2006 11:13:35 UTC