Acronyms

While I was writing the previous piece, the way that we have increasingly become reliant upon acronyms suddenly struck home.

After working in IT (an acronym of course, that used to be DP, another acronym, when I first started) for 28 years, I should have been aware of this, of course. No industry is more affected (or should I say "afflicted"?).

So when is an acronym an official acronym, and when is is simply a combination of letters that have slipped into common use (like IT again)? And how international have these acronyms become - NATO in English is OTAN in French, and NAVO in Dutch for example.

Do we have a need for a body to decide these things, maybe an international body (did I just catch sight of angry smoke signals appearing from the USA when I made that last remark?)? Maybe we already have one somewhere?

And then there are the words like "a", "the", "for" etc which serve as link words in the real meaning of the phrase, but are often omitted in English acronyms. In German these get included most of the the time, but as lower case letters (so "f" for "für", the German word for "for", is common).

It might serve a purpose though. At the moment some acronyms are simply not possible. If you set up a Society for the Heightening of Innovative Technology, you could not turn it into an acronym (unless the grand design of the original project was nothing like as good as intended!).

And then there are things that would not work internationally, but might be OK in one language. In English a Movement for Innovative Scientific Technology would work OK, but you would not be recommendeded to use the English acronym in Germany. Better call it BfIWT here, using its German initials and not forgetting the "f"!

Anyway I rather like the idea of setting up a body for establishing international acronym approval (if one does not exist already). It might be the right medium to provide me, finally, with the job that I am looking for but cannot find!