Re: Use of acronyms (was RE: purl.net/net/cp)

From: Marion Gunn (mgunn@egt.ie)
Date: Fri Oct 26 2007 - 08:00:18 CDT

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    Thanks for your Smiley, James - am glad someone picked up humour
    pointers, such as the longest sentence I have ever posted (to this
    list) and the ref. to more time on computers than is healthy
    (unavoidable in our jobs).

    If I were to make a real point about acronyms/abbreviations, it would
    be to celebrate the rise of alternatives, such as the punctuation-
    based smiley and number-based shorthand such as +1 (assent) and -1
    (dissent) and the like, because such are equally clear (unambiguous)
    in any language and offend nobody.
    mg

    On 24 Oct 2007, at 05:05, scríobh James Kass:

    > On 24 Oct 2007, at 05:05, James Kass wrote:
    > Marion Gunn wrote,
    >
    >
    >> On the plus side, Philippe, you may safely take the explosion of
    >> English-based acronyms as a sure indicator of the growing number of
    >> monoglot English speaker so scared that their language is becoming
    >> international (not just theirs to use, but everybody's, especially in
    >> the case of those of them who still harbour a genuine horror of
    >> polyglots, which we must respect as real fear to them), that they
    >> feel a genuine need to club together behind acronyms and the like,
    >> which is silly in the extreme, but please accept it may be better for
    >> your sanity to see that as being really more their problem than
    >> yours, as they clearly must spend more time on computers than is
    >> healthy for any brain.:-)
    >>
    >>
    >
    > Couple thoughts, or so.
    >
    > That is a very long sentence.
    >
    > Even though there are dedicated Unicode characters (☺,☻) for
    > the "smiley", most people still use the ASCII approximation.
    >
    > Is the stereotype of the provincial English speaker who expects
    > everyone in the whole world to learn English now being replaced
    > by a group fear that the whole world will?
    >
    > Most of these "shorthand" items are technically abbreviations
    > rather than acronyms. (Yes, it's a nit-pick, but this *is* a
    > technical list. <smile>)
    >
    > Best regards,
    >
    > James Kass
    > 

    --
Marion Gunn
mgunn@ucd.ie
- -
Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* mgunn@egt.ie * eamonn@egt.ie *

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