From: Freeman Craig Presson (dhr@iname.com)
Date: Thu Jul 15 1999 - 23:19:01 MDT
On 15 Jul 99, at 12:30, Weaver, Evan A. wrote:
> [...] And you're not allowed
> to have an acronym in an acronym. You're supposed to expand it. That would
> make it SSPSETIR, which looks very odd.
Whoa -- maybe MLA or someone doesn't like embedded acronyms, but hackerdom is
certainly fond of nested and even recursive ones, "Gnu's Not Unix" being a
very familiar example (not only recursive but also false in all but a narrow
legalistic sense).
My favorite of all time was not nested, but self-referential: TLA for "Three-
Letter Abbreviation."
Enough usage also tends to make acronyms into words. A recent example set my
teeth on edge: there was a poster announcing a social event at work, which
contained "Please RSVP" (translates to "Please respond, please" -- the place
runs on "AC current", too, I'll bet) and "we will need your RSVP by [date]."
-- fcp@traveller.com (Freeman Craig Presson)
-- ExI member, geek-at-large, etc.
-- http://www.bhm.tis.net/~fcp/
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