Technical Expressions
Recent Articles
Pages
Writing-related Ads
This site hosted by:
Did You Know...
- Warren has been a technical writer since 1994
May 1, 2009 | 6:21 pm
Since 1994 I have established and maintained a thriving technical writing consulting business. During this time I have been responsible for designing, authoring, and publishing on-line help systems, websites, user guides, requirement and design specifications, policies and procedures, training materials, and promotional products. I also offer training courses on technical writing to industry and through [...] -
Archive for Did You Know... »
Other Resources
- CBE Document Storehouse This is the Document Storehouse for CBE LINC materials. You will require special permission to access the CBE Document Storehouse.
- CityDesk Primer This wiki-site introduces the content management system (CMS) tool CityDesk and includes worked examples of how to use CityDesk to manage your website and online content.
- File Depot The file depo is a place where you and I can share project related files. You will require special permission to access the file depot.
- Support Request Tracking For those of you that have a maintenance arrangement with Technical Expressions, this support and maintenenace request tracking system lets you tell us what you need, and then monitor our progress.
- Technical Expressions' Wiki This wiki-site provides resources to myself and other technical writers and web designers.
- Warehouse This is a secure document warehouse for project documentation. You will require special permission to access the document warehouse.
Oct
15
What to do about acronyms
October 15, 2009
Acronyms, those 2, 3, 4, and sometimes 5 letter short forms, are everywhere.
- If we’re hungry we might get a BLT, or maybe some OJ and a PBJ sandwich, or maybe some KD.
- At home we might switch on ESPN and watch an NHL game or an NBA game or an NFL game or an MLB game or the PGA tournament.
- We worry about our kids having ADHD and we watch our BMI and restrict the amount of MSG we consume so we don’t end up in ICU, or in ER, or even worse, DOA. In business, our CEO will discuss our B2B strategy with FT and PT employees.
- We may have a B2C service that is open 24/7 that our CFO claims is too inefficient so he asks the CTO to get the IT department to make it cost effective.
- And let’s not even get started with our computer life where we surf the WWW using a URL to find a BLOG site or review our RSS feeds or go to a P2P site to listen to a new band.
But did you know that acronyms are a 20th Century thing. The first time the word acronym was defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was 1949. Boy have we come a long way since then.
The word acronym comes from the Greek word akros, meaning topmost or extreme, and onoma meaning name. So acronyms are extreme names. Using them is not as dangerous as some extreme sports, but we do need to be careful not to hurt our readers with them.
