DROWNING IN ACRONYMS

OMG!
LOL!
WYSIWYG.
WIGO?

Wherever you look, you are confronted by verbal shorthand, which is fine providing that everyone knows what the shorthand means.

I have added one of my own to those above, mainly because I like it….

“What Is Going On?”

I can accept the DJIA ticker showing company share movements (IBM, GE, F…) and I can (just about) accept that companies themselves are acronyms - but they’re managed by acronyms (CEO, CIO, CTO, CFO……); it makes me wonder whether everyone’s a manager nowadays!

Governments also add more than their fair share – FBI, MI5, SEC to name a few; and the list would never be complete without the acronymic tsunami emanating from the EU – EUDICT, EUTEL, EUSTAT…and on and on and on.

Of course, technology has given us a vast swathe of them – from the ubiquitous CPU, which is now running our CD-ROM’s, and downloading MP3’s (they were songs, not so long ago!) and controlling our HDTV (which I don’t have). 

Long names do need shorthand and acronyms feel safer, known and controllable, especially with medicine. As examples, AIDS and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Somehow, people respond more and better to an acronym than to the real name of their problem. Even food has its acronyms – UHT and GMO for two.

I feel that with texting now at its height, we shall see, hear and read even more. I’m waiting for the UN to add yet another “arm” to itself and create a new function called the “Central Resource Allocation Program” or for a power company to create “Super High-Intensity Transmission” – then I know we will have hit “bottom”….

UNT (no more, I promise),


Peripatetic Scribe