- From: Paul Prescod <papresco@technologist.com>
- Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 19:30:03 -0400
- To: "Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@mail.cern.ch>
- CC: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, www-html@w3.org
Alan J. Flavell wrote: > Where I come from, TLA stands for three letter _abbreviation_. > > One positive feature: even though you disagree with your dictionary, > you said nothing that debars acronyms from being pronounced. So on > that point you must agree that the HTML4.0 draft is wrong, even if > we'd have to differ on the other parts of the issue. That's true. I'm trying to figure out where we really differ on the other parts of the issue? Do you really think that more people consider the word ACRONYM as being restricted to those initial-based abbreviations that are spoken as words? (Yahoo searches notwithstanding??) Or is our difference in the question of whether the HTML specification should be descriptive or prescriptive with regard to its use of the English language? I don't mind being prescriptive as long as we are not obfuscatory and "initialism" would be. My spell checker doesn't even include the word! Paul Prescod P.S. Merriam-Webster supports the wider definition. Look up "initialism". So Peter Flynn's opinion that this comes from the US is probably not correct.
Received on Wednesday, 30 July 1997 19:30:01 UTC