- From: Lauke PH <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 10:33:54 +0100
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- Cc: "Ian Lloyd \(Accessify.com\)" <accessify@yahoo.co.uk>
Ian's definition on http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/acrobot/why-you-should-use-acronyms.asp >An abbreviation is just that - a string of words that have been >reduced to their initial leading letters. When you read it out, >you naturally pronounce each letter individually. >NSPCC pronounced "Enn Ess Pee See See" >RNIB pronounced "Arr Enn Eye Bee" > >An acronym is a special kind of abbreviation. Either by luck or >design, the initial letters make up an abbreviation that can be >read aloud as a word in its own right: >NASA pronounced "Nassa" >GUI pronounced "Gooey" I'm not a scholar of semantics, but I'm not entirely sure if this would be the right distinction to make. I've always understood "acronym" to be anything formed from the initial letters of a multi-word name/sentence (so, even NSPCC & RNIB would be acronyms) and "abbreviation" to denote anything that represents a shortened form for a word (e.g. MCR for Manchester, Lancs for Lancashire, etc for et cetera, and so on...including acronyms as a special subset of abbreviations as well). So...is the definition of - and the line between - acronym and abbreviation blurred, or is it just me ? Patrick ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Webmaster / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk
Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2003 05:35:01 UTC