ON ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

This week, my journal on “The Things I Learn Everyday”, is  about acronyms and abbreviations.

 

I took time to find out what IMHO means when I  encountered it twice on a post of my FB friend.  I didn’t realize there was an earlier debate on whether H stands for “humble” or “honest”. 

The debate went on until Alexis C. Mdrigal of The Atlantic, saw a glossary from a 1986 PC magazine and found that IMHO stands for “In my humble opinion”. 

When I was introduced to texting early, early on, I didn’t understand some common acronyms used in informal internet lingo.  So every time my daughters used one that I didn’t understand, I asked.  Nothing wrong in asking rather than remain ignorant forever, right? 

Acronyms are coined from the first letters of a phrase or a title to form a word or a significant set of letters.  Relevant acronyms during this pandemic times are: 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Emergency Use Authorization (EUA); 

get the drift?   But there are exceptions, one is:  CUL, it means “see you later “. So it’s not only the initial letters that is being used, but also letters that sounds like a word. 

In the informal vernacular messages used by Filipinos; letters and numbers are combined to shorten a word but I wonder if they qualify as acronyms. 

22o reads totoo, meaning it’s true. 

L8 is late

This technique is used locally in sending  Short Message Service (SMS); see this is the way to use an acronym in formal writing:   Notice I wrote the full phrase first followed by the acronym. 

Have you heard about a mother who sent a text to her son about the sadden passing of an uncle.  In closing she wrote; 

“LOL, your Mom”. 

“Mom, why are you laughing?  Uncle passed”, son asked 

“Why?”, I said Lots Of Love”.  

Is this also debatable?  

When I was young and goes around the cemetery on all saints day;  there is that standard “RIP” written on graves.  My friends used to say “Return If Possible”. 

Grammar dictates not to confuse acronyms with abbreviations.  Abbreviation is a shortened version to represent the whole; common of which are: St. for street,

 Ave. for Avenue, 

cm for centinter, 

in. for inches, 

Dr. and Prof. but Atty is an acronym,which  means “a thousand thank yous”. 

Do you know this acronym?

HHOK,  “ ha ha, only kidding”!