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.ukReceived on Wednesday, 23 April 2003 05:35:01 UTC
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