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I don't like the acronym-happy cultures that some companies have, where they backform names to fit into cutesy abbreviations, like the Project to Rename Everything into Tidy Everyday and Normal Terms In an Outrageously Uninteresting Style. Still, a group should consider what the abbreviation is and whether it sounds silly. Today I am writing a sales proposal for the Medicaid Enterprise Restructuring Project. MERP. I wouldn't have abbreviated it, but their documents do so. It sounds like twerp.
I've worked in healthcare for years, and I still blink at STD (Short Term Disability).
I've worked in healthcare for years, and I still blink at STD (Short Term Disability).
This goes to show that you've got to pay attention to context. STD is also used as an abbreviation for Sexually Transmitted Disease (which may not necessarily be a short term disability!)
Years ago, some coworkers and I were tasked with creating an internal newsletter for a membership-driven organization. The powers that be wanted us to incorporate an acronym into the title.
We came up with Voices of Members In Touch, or VOMIT.
It is true, though, that far too many abbreviations are duplicates and mean several different very common things, like CD.
When I hear people using workplace shorthand when not at the work place (like RNs at a dinner party talking about the OR), it erodes my confidence that they are effective communicators, or it suggests that there is some haughty affectation going on about their line of work, which is often pedestrian. No astronomer or ophthalmologist would do that.
What really irks me is to hear people using nicknames for the names of nearby towns. Like my sister who goes to a mall in 'Tosa (the suburb of Wauwatosa) to buy clothes for her trip to Vegas. As if they are in some inner circle of people who have such an intimate familiarity with these places, that they are on a first-name basis with them and they gloat about it. But then, I have a particular hatred for nicknames, and I refuse to use them under any circumstances, except for people whose real names I do not know.
This goes to show that you've got to pay attention to context. STD is also used as an abbreviation for Sexually Transmitted Disease (which may not necessarily be a short term disability!)
Yes, that's what I mean. Last month I wrote a proposal for STD Management.
I have noticed a proliferation of acronyms lately. I have started making up my own, much to my wife's chagrin. For instance:
Bojangles Collisuem is BoCo
Starlight Mall is StarMa
and so forth.
One that bothers me (and it is for no particular reason) is the mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator. They call it CoMo (communicator mobile). For some reason, that irks me.
The Military are the great inventors and perpetrators of acroynems. CICLANT, MACV, ASROC and a zillion others. The one I like is PIW (Personal Infantry Weapon) for gun!
The one that irks me the most in New York is the neighborhood name DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).
My employer is also very big on acronyms. All our facilities have 2 or 3-letter shorthand names.
Years ago when I flew to Florida to meet my significant other's family for the first time, his brother was a deputy in the county sheriff's department and his mother had a police radio going all the time. Everybody was always saying on the radio that they would meet back at the Esso, or "I'll see you at the Esso." I'm old enough to remember when Esso gas stations changed their name to Exxon, at least in New Jersey, but I figured maybe it was still Esso in Florida. I thought it was pretty pathetic that a gas station was apparently the hot place for everyone to meet and hang out.
Turned out they were saying S.O.--for Sheriff's Office.
Increasingly, these kinds of formations are incorportating themselved in the official geographical names. In Missouro, Lake Taneycomo and Lake Jacomo are man-made reservoirs located in Taney and Jackson counties. Claycomo is a suburban town in Clay County, Missouri. In new Orleans, one of the major west-bank thoroughfares is Lapalco Boulevard, built on what used to be the access road to Louisiana Power and Light Company. There are state line towns that have been there for a century, with names like Florala and Texoma.
Mighty, your Esso gas stations were called that by the Standard Oil company---S.O. There was also a Socony gas, for Standard Oil Company of New York. Conoco gas was sold by the Continental Oil Company, and Sunoco by the Sun Oil Company, and Arco by Atlantic Richfield Company.
We sell computer systems for car dealers. Everything that a client does on our system is done by choosing a program from a menu. All of the programs have short code names to identify them quickly. One of the standard reports in our Service application is a profitability report that's known by its menu code, 'RAP'. Some of our larger clients own several dealerships, so one of our subsidiaries developed a report that combines the results from all of their service departments. They call it the "Combined RAP Report", and yes, they gave it the menu code 'CRAP'.
That's not all.
Since this report is brand new, it isn't in anybody's security profile yet. So when someone tries to run it, they get this message:
"Sorry, you are not authorized to run CRAP!"
I'll bet the first users to get this error message were laughing too hard to call tech support.
I told my father about this, and he told me another good acronym story - he and a friend told people about thirty years ago that they were starting a school to teach communication in the business world. They called it:
Business Usage Language Laboratory Special High Intensity Training
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