Writelife

One of my favourite hobbyhorses is acronyms – they drive me crazy. I understand why they are used. I think they can be practical, even functional. But it just makes me nuts the way they are used with the assumption readers are aware of their meaning.

This week I while trawling blogs I saw AI being used. It appears it refers to American Idol. However, not long ago it referred to a Steven Spielberg movie, which had a title based on A.I. meaning artificial intelligence.

Today I saw CFL used in a headline, “CFL’s - No Child Left Behind.” This seemed an odd reference to me, living in Canada, where for as long as I’ve been alive CFL referred to the Canadian Football League. It appears, however, in this case CFL refers to compact fluorescent light.

The problem here is that if you do not define the acronym when it is first used in a post, article, e-mail or whatever, your reader has no idea what you mean. You have assumed they are a certain type of person from a certain place with a certain knowledge and, especially online, more often than not that just ain’t so.

As an example, if I were beginning a post for a blog, I would not write:

Last night I watched AI.

I would (and should) write:

Last night I watched AI (American Idol).

After establishing what the acronym refers to (in this case, AI for American Idol), you can just use the acronym since now your audience knows what you mean. Knock yourself out!

Acronyms are, of course, an absolute nightmare in the worlds of business and government where they are often business specific, industry specific and company specific. I recall when I first started working for one company and began seeing references to PMO everywhere. Having grown up in Ottawa, PMO always referred to the Prime Minister’s Office. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what Canada’s Prime Minister had to do with our company.

The point: acronyms are not the enemy of communication but the way they tend to get used is. Please ensure your reader knows what your acronyms mean before you start tossing them around.
Tags: Acronyms, Communication, Writing

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