Re: Another critique request

Mark Tranchant wrote:

There are a few acronyms that may be mysterious to "neophytes".
Perhaps add a few <acronym> tags?

The examples you give are not acronyms, but abbreviations. Of course, to
allow IE users to see them, I have to use <acronym>... :-(

- IT and PA on the People page
- RSS and MP3 on the Sermons page
- Use of BBC. I always think of the British Broadcasting Company.

Ah, a sticky area to be sure. The above do, however, adhere to the

definition of an acronym: A word formed by using the first letters of a
name. IT = Information Technology, PA = Public Address, RSS = Really
Simple Syndication, etc.

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jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:00:30 -0700, Jim Moe
<jmm-list.AXSPAMGN (AT) sohnen-moe (DOT) com> wrote:

Mark Tranchant wrote:

There are a few acronyms that may be mysterious to "neophytes".
Perhaps add a few <acronym> tags?

The examples you give are not acronyms, but abbreviations. Of course, to
allow IE users to see them, I have to use <acronym>... :-(

- IT and PA on the People page
- RSS and MP3 on the Sermons page
- Use of BBC. I always think of the British Broadcasting Company.

Ah, a sticky area to be sure. The above do, however, adhere to the
definition of an acronym: A word formed by using the first letters of a
name. IT = Information Technology, PA = Public Address, RSS = Really
Simple Syndication, etc.

So how many people pronounce IT as the word "it"? Or PA as "pa"? No-one
I know. And by no stretch of the imagination is RSS a word. Acronyms are
words like radar, laser and NASA, which are normally spoken as words,
not as sequences of letters.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:56:35 +0100, Stephen Poley
<sbpoleySpicedHamTrap (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl> wrote:

[...]

So how many people pronounce IT as the word "it"? Or PA as "pa"? No-one
I know. And by no stretch of the imagination is RSS a word. Acronyms are
words like radar, laser and NASA, which are normally spoken as words,
not as sequences of letters.

Although I actually like that definition, it is not universally
accepted. Merriam-Webster, for example, suggests that initalisms also
count as acronyms:

<http://m-w.com/dictionary/acronym>

The Online Etymology Dictionary suggest that the coinage is recent,
which may be part of the problem:

<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=acronym>

Unfortunately, there is no standards-setting body for English language
usage so confusion is likely to continue.

But getting back to web-authoring. How do speaking browers or text
readers treat <acronym> markup? Do they attempt to speak it as a word,
or do they spell out each letter? And do they do anything with the
title attribute? I think it would be pretty useless to mark text as,
for example:

<acronym title="radio detection and ranging">radar</acronym>

if the browser would speak it as either intials or use the title.

I think I'm beginning to accept Jukka's opinion that <acronym> or
<abbr> markup is worse than useless.

Nick

--
Nick Theodorakis
nick_theodorakis (AT) hotmail (DOT) com
contact form:
http://theodorakis.net/contact.html

Stephen Poley wrote:

Ah, a sticky area to be sure. The above do, however, adhere to the
definition of an acronym: A word formed by using the first letters of a
name. IT = Information Technology, PA = Public Address, RSS = Really
Simple Syndication, etc.

So how many people pronounce IT as the word "it"? Or PA as "pa"? No-one
I know. And by no stretch of the imagination is RSS a word. Acronyms are
words like radar, laser and NASA, which are normally spoken as words,
not as sequences of letters.

They are pronounced as "eye-tee," "pee-ay" and "are-ess-ess."

Consider this one: TLA = Three Letter Acronym.
Nevertheless, good point. Even the html spec is a bit vague on the
difference between an abbreviation and an acronym, although they are
closer to your definition than mine. They give an example of URI (you are
eye) as an abbreviation although it is also an acronym (youree).

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, Jim Moe wrote:

Consider this one: TLA = Three Letter Acronym.

No, TLA = Three Letter Abbreviation.

On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, Nick Theodorakis wrote:

On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:56:35 +0100, Stephen Poley

So how many people pronounce IT as the word "it"? Or PA as "pa"? No-one
I know. And by no stretch of the imagination is RSS a word. Acronyms are
words like radar, laser and NASA, which are normally spoken as words,
not as sequences of letters.


Although I actually like that definition, it is not universally
accepted.

Oh dear. This is awfully off-topic, but if you insist on
raising it. There is indeed some slovenly use of the term.

Merriam-Webster, for example, suggests that initalisms also
count as acronyms:

Acronyms indeed include pronounceable initialisms (such as NATO,
UNESCO).

The term Acronym was originally coined (as its etymology shows) to
denote a word made of the initial parts of words (e.g NATO, radar,
Comecon). The parts may be initial letters, syllables, or other
initial fragments of the words.

http://m-w.com/dictionary/acronym

Oh dear: it points us to

http://m-w.com/dictionary/initialism

which in turn offers "an acronym formed from initial letters"

So we have Petitio Principii. Each "definition" relies on knowing
their interpretation of an equally disputed term.

The Online Etymology Dictionary suggest that the coinage is recent,

Let's just say that the sloppy usage of "acronym" has got worse over
the last few decades. MEU2 wasn't in any doubt about the proper
meanings of the term. Dictionaries, however, set out to record actual
usage, whether it be good or bad. *If* there was some other term
which unambiguously meant what "acronym" was coined to mean, then I
wouldn't so much object to the loss of duplication. However, what we
have now is that two words (acronym and abbreviation) are frequently
(mis)used interchangeably, and we are left with no term at all which
unambiguously means what "acronym" was coined to mean. That's an
impoverishment of the language, on any scale.

The HTML specification is no help: review the discussions which went
on about this at the W3C when it was in draft.