The main reason that people give for using acronyms and abbreviations is that it’s quicker than saying or writing it in full. So, if someone uses an acronym or abbreviation — ask what it means. Every time. Even if you know what it means. Someone else might not know but not want to ask.

Overusing acronyms unconsciously can be damaging and abusive to listeners. All too often, people aren’t even aware of their acronym usage, nor have they thought about the appropriateness of using acronyms with a target audience. This deadly combination can result in: Confusion for — and alienation of — your listeners.

Acronyms are annoying, but they're far worse than that: use them without explanation and you risk excluding your earliest leads and killing your marketing process. So, learn how to write for your audience. Always be clear with your readers, and they’ll always get the information they came to your website for.

Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees.

Acronyms are not bad per se, but in today’s workplace we use them all too frequently. One of my friends recently joined a company that maintains an internal list of over 700 acronyms. 700!

Sometimes, acronyms are useful, but usually, they are just terrible. If you're in the military, the CIA (see what we did there?) or performing some other top-secret task, by all means, abbreviate. We can sympathize: We, too, used acronyms to notify our friends when our parents were hovering near our AIM conversations ( "pos! pos!"

Why? Because it is rare, if at all, that an acronym actually translates well into another language. An exception would be the more universally used acronyms, for instance International Organization for Standardization (ISO); but most acronyms do not translate well. There are many problems with relying on acronyms and abbreviations when writing content for translation, but …

There is no correct answer to this question, but it is my opinion that you should only use an acronym if another programmer immediately knows it's expansion or meaning. Common examples would be names like dvdPlayer or cssClass, where a longer version would decrease the readability of your code.

Acronyms are meaningless unless you use the entire name first. If you persist in using acronyms without explanation, then you’ve lost your audience. For example, use The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority the first time you mention it instead of FINRA, its more common acronym. FINRA is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United …

The Acronym is the official student paper of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. Founded in 1988, it was originally an unofficial and underground paper, but has since become the official paper. We currently have a staff of 30 dedicated editors and writers working hard to provide IMSA with high quality journalism.