Re: Abbreviations and Acronyms

At 11:20 AM -0700 14/10/99 [dmy], Dmitry Beransky wrote about [Subject] Re:
Abbreviations and Acronyms:
 >A perfect case of truth been in the eye of the beholder :)
 >
 >I'm not sure why the spec considers FBI to be an acronym (then again, I'm
 >not a native English speaker), but the example with "SQL" makes perfect
 >sense.  Myself, I always spell it out "S.Q.L," while some people I know
 >pronounce it as "Sequel," yet other people say "Squirrel."

Like Dmitri, I am not a native English speaker and believe than the fine
line between Abbreviations and Acronyms should be specified *precisely*
according to some rule. My view is that, since "acronym" is a recently
made-up American word (it is *not* in the Oxford English Dictionary, and
the Italian version "acronimo" someone suggested is *not* in any Italian
dictionary), most people in the world are not familiar with it.
Therefore, those who decided to differentiate between two groups of
logograms *must* refer to an American dictionary and provide us nongs with
the proper definitions.

I'd like to add that I haven't yet understood the reason why the two should
be distinguished.


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Received on Thursday, 14 October 1999 20:06:05 UTC