Beware: acronyms and abbreviations can have multiple meanings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on September 7, 2021 I posted about Don’t AWE your audience by using Acronyms Without Explanations. Always define acronyms because they are a form of jargon. There is an excellent article by Neil M. Davis in Medical Writing magazine on December 2020 (Volume 29, Number 4, pages 16 to 19) titled Medical abbreviations with multiple meanings: A prescription for disaster.

 

For example, HD can mean Hansen Disease, Hodgkin Disease, or Huntington Disease. And NBM can mean Nothing by Mouth, No Bowel Movement, or Normal Bowel Movement. NE can mean No Effect, No Enlargement, or just Not Evaluated. The general link for that magazine (which has freely downloadable articles) is here.

 

My cartoon was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Master public speaking with the PRESENT method

 

There is a good, brief article by Amanda Connelly at Forbes on November 18, 2024 titled Master Public Speaking With The PRESENT Method. She discusses seven essential steps:

 

P: Prepare Thoroughly

R: Research Your Audience

E: Engage From The Start

S: Simplify Your Visuals

E: Express With Body Language

N: Nurture Your Nerves

T: Tailor Your Conclusion

 

 

Don’t forget to connect the dots when sharing numbers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent brief article by Teresa Zumwald at Zumwald and Company titled Public speaking tip: Connect the dots when sharing facts and figures. She asked whether you, as a speaker, take the time to connect the dots for your audience. They can’t just rewind and review what you said.

 

Teresa quoted from a speech by Carl Razo titled Trade Matters, Because People Matter, which won in the Economics category in the 2017 Cicero Speechwriting Awards. (I blogged about them on April 16, 2019 in a post titled What do award winning speeches look like?) It appears on page 31 of THESE VITAL SPEECHES: The Best of the 2017 Cicero Speechwriting Awards. You can download it here. Carl pointed out that:

 

“….Twenty years ago, trade as a percentage of GDP was 20%. In 2015 this figure was nearly 30%.

      Twenty years ago, global FDI was worth US $ 341 billion. In 2015 this figure reached US $ 1.7 TRILLION, with FDI stock tripling as a percentage of global GDP since 1990.   

      Twenty years ago, there were 123 members of the WTO. Today there are 164.

      To put it differently: We have never traded as much as we trade today. Firms have never invested as much abroad as they do today. And we have never been as many actors as there are today in the global trading system.

       We are living in an age of unprecedented interdependency, where the destiny of each of us is more than ever tied to the destiny of others.”

 

Carl was speaking to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva on November 24, 2016. They all knew that the acronym GDP means Gross Domestic Product, and FDI means Foreign Direct Investment. Your audience might not, so you should define each acronym the first time you use it.

 

There is a web page about the Cicero awards, with a link for downloading the .pdf of the 2022 award winners.  

 

The image was constructed in PowerPoint using blue, gold, green, and red balls from Openclipart.  

 

It is easy is to parody a brand name or logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You don’t get to choose your nickname, and might not like what you get called. Every month I get at a letter or postcard advertising Sparklight - the fiber-optic internet provider which before summer 2019 had called themselves CableOne. As shown above, their logo is just a purple slash. But I always refer to them by a parody of that name, Fart light. Why? Twenty years ago (back in 1999) there was an animated comedy film titled South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Inside that film there is another titled Asses of Fire, in which the characters Terrance and Phillip try to light their farts on fire. My logo is a torch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similarly, the satellite TV provider Dish Network has a logo where the letter I is made from a red circle and three successively larger crescents. As shown above, my parody of their logo is Pish (Scotch slang for urine) instead of Dish and shows a stream presumably going down the toilet.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What used to be called Yellow Freight has a logo that already is a parody. Their rounded orange trapezoid clearly is not really Yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One awful choice for a new logo was for a UK agency whose acronym is OGC, the Office of Government Commerce. On September 22, 2021 Joseph Foley discussed it in an an article at the Creative Bloq titled 14 design fails that were so bad they were actually good. As shown above, when you rotate the logo ninety degrees to the right the horizontal line for the G is very rude. It looks like a man with his fly unzipped whose penis is pointing upward.  

 

ARF - the Asshole Rightwing Fringe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is the first anniversary of an attack at the U. S. Capitol. I went looking for an insult with an acronym even nastier than RINO (Republican In Name Only), and came up with ARF (Asshole Rightwing Fringe).

 

ARF previously has been used by both Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation and the Advertising Research Foundation. The barking dog image came from Openclipart.  

 

Don’t AWE your audience by using Acronyms Without Explanations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At her Maniactive blog on August 9, 2021 there is an excellent brief post by Laura Bergells titled AWE: Acronyms Without Explanation!. Using an acronym without defining it first is an awful use of jargon. It indicates you think that is NMJ (Not My Job) but it is. On July 5, 2019 I blogged about how The first time you use an acronym you need to define it.

 

Acronyms sometimes have multiple meanings. Recently many people would say that BLM obviously means Black Lives Matter. But in states like Nevada, Utah, and Idaho the older meaning is the federal Bureau of Land Management. In Nevada 81.1% of land is federally owned. Of that 83.9% is by that BLM and 10.1% % is U.S. Forest Service. In Utah 66.5% of land is federally owned. Of that 65.2% is BLM and 23.4% % is U.S. Forest Service. Here in Idaho 61.7% of land is federally owned. Of that 62.7% is U.S. Forest Service, and 35.6% is BLM. 

 

The image was adapted from a cartoon of a woman presenting a sales flow chart at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Is that a RHINO or a RINO?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Wikipedia the acronym RINO redirects to a page titled Republican In Name Only. There is an article by Phil Edwards at Vox on September 29, 2015 titled A brief history of the term RINO, from Roosevelt to Boehner.

 

But at the Gem State Patriot News blog for August 4, 2021 there is an article by Dr. John Livingston, who is notorious for not proofreading his writing, titled ED (Electile Dysfunction) which says in the fourth paragraph that:  

 

“….We have three conservatives running for Governor in the Republican primary and they have been triangulated and essentially marginalized by the Romney/Kasich - RHINO establishment wing of our party.”

 

And in the sixth paragraph he says:

 

“….They are essentially placing themselves above the cause—which is what the RHINOs and their close allies the Dems want us to do and are counting on…..”

 

The word rhino instead refers to a rhinoceros, and the acronym to Really Here In Name Only.

 

Images of a rhinoceros unicornis and Mitt Romney both came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

AMPP: A very bad choice for an acronym

 

On January 6, 2021 there is an article at the web site for Materials Performance magazine titled Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) is Formed, and also a press release. That organization combines two about preventing corrosion - with acronyms of NACE and SSPC. NACE began as the National Association of Corrosion Engineers and was renamed NACE International. SSPC was the Steel Structures Painting Council.

 

But how do you pronounce the acronym AMPP? Is it Ay Em Pee Pee, or Am Pee Pee. According to Lexico PeePee is a child’s word for urinating or a penis. Before the combined organization chose that name and acronym they should have checked with the mythical Office Of Pronounceable Spellings (OOPS), which I blogged about on April 6, 2018 in a post titled Shouldn’t acronyms be pronounceable?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I see AMPP what comes to mind is the famous statue from 1619 in Brussels, known as  Manneken Pis and shown above.

Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers

At Medium on September 5, 2020 there is a very useful article by Jay Krasnow titled 10 Editing Tips Writers Need to Know (one involves bean soup). They can be applied to speechwriting, PowerPoint, and blog posts. I have paraphrased them as follows:

Don’t leave out the main ingredient – be sure there are beans in the bean soup.

Look at your copy upside-down.

Check all the names (people and places).

Verify the pairs (parentheses, brackets).

Are all acronyms defined when they first are used?

Verify the phone numbers, addresses, and hyperlinks.

Do titles and section headings make sense?

Look for clusters of errors.

Make sure you read it out loud.

Check your formatting.

When you look at your printed copy upside-down, spacing errors and weird fonts will stand out. In Patrick Winston’s presentation on How to Speak (discussed in my previous post) at 31:48 he described looking at a printout of a presentation to see if the slides were too heavy – cursed with solid blocks of text.

The last thing I do with a blog post after I publish it is to go back and add all the hyperlinks. Then I view it, and click on the hyperlinks to see they all work. When reading through the post I may find errors not caught by the spell checker in Word – like accidentally leaving the h off of harm.

In Jeff Smith’s 1990 cookbook The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors the recipe for Beef Bulgogi lists ingredients for the marinade but it doesn’t say how much or what type of beef to use. The text just says to prepare the beef. A later web version at Good Food says it really is one pound of beef ribeye.

At the Gem State Patriot News there recently was a pair of articles by Dr. John Livingston with repeated misspellings. One on September 3, 2020 titled Lies and More Lies says flue instead of flu (as shown above). That’s a cluster of spelling errors. A second article on September 5, 2020 titled Do you believe in miracles? says Devine instead of Divine. (Andy Devine was a well-known character actor, but not divinely inspired). In between those two there is a third on September 4, 2020 titled What is an expert? Dr. Livingston says that:

“An expert is someone who knows a great amount about a small slice of the world, and most experts fail to see how their small sliver of the pie relates to the rest of the world.”

But we expect his small sliver to include getting all the spelling right - rather than depending on an editor to fix that detail. Another version of What is an expert? appears at the Idaho Freedom Foundation on September 8, 2020 titled Experts and the people. There the author is listed with his middle initial as Dr. John M. Livingston. That version was edited to have more paragraphs.

An article by Olivia Mitchell at Speaking About Presenting describes 9 ways to edit your presentation. Olivia says to have one focus (a core message), and no more than three main points. Cut anything that does not relate to the core message, like secondary examples or stories.

Another article by Andrew Dlugan at Six Minutes on March 4, 2008 is titled Speech Preparation #5: Six power principles for speech editing. He says to edit for focus, clarity, concision, continuity, variety, impact and beauty.

The image of beef bulgogi came from Debbie Tingzon at Wikimedia Commons.

Socko!: an acronym about punching home your primary message point in crisis communication

You need a five-letter acronym to impress a Ph.D. (like me) or an M.D. One I recently saw is pronounced SOCKO!  It comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That acronym appears in the 2018 CDC Field Epidemiology Manual by Sonja J. Rasmussen and Richard A. Goodman. Chapter 12, by Abbigail J. Tumpey, David Daigle, and Glen Nowack is titled Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Health Investigation. It says:

  

“For most news reports, you will have only one direct quotation; therefore, make it count. Write down your primary message point, often called the Single Overriding Health Communication Objective, or SOHCO (pronounced sock-O). You want your audience to remember this one key point because it is the most important message about the topic. A communications expert can help you refine the SOHCO and make sure it resonates. Say the SOHCO at the beginning of the interview. At the end of the interview, the reporter most likely will ask you if you have anything else that you have not covered. Take that opportunity to repeat the SOHCO; say, for example, ‘Thank you for your interest in this topic. The most important thing for your audience to remember is [repeat the SOHCO]’.”

I found out about that book from a long magazine article in May 4, 2020 issue of The New Yorker by Charles Duhigg titled Seattle’s leaders let scientists take the lead. New York’s did not. The twelfth paragraph of his article explains:

“…The C.D.C.’s Field Epidemiology Manual, which devotes an entire chapter to communication during a health emergency, indicates that there should be a lead spokesperson whom the public gets to know—familiarity breeds trust. The spokesperson should have a ‘Single Overriding Health Communication Objective, or SOHCO (pronounced sock-O),’ which should be repeated at the beginning and the end of any communication with the public. After the opening SOHCO, the spokesperson should ‘acknowledge concerns and express understanding of how those affected by the illnesses or injuries are probably feeling.’ Such a gesture of empathy establishes common ground with scared and dubious citizens—who, because of their mistrust, can be at the highest risk for transmission. The spokesperson should make special efforts to explain both what is known and what is unknown. Transparency is essential, the field manual says, and officials must ‘not over-reassure or overpromise.’

The lead spokesperson should be a scientist. Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting C.D.C. director and an E.I.S. alumnus, explained to me, ‘If you have a politician on the stage, there’s a very real risk that half the nation is going to do the opposite of what they say.’ During the H1N1 outbreak of 2009—which caused some twelve thousand American deaths, infections in every state, and seven hundred school closings—Besser and his successor at the C.D.C., Dr. Tom Frieden, gave more than a hundred press briefings. President Barack Obama spoke publicly about the outbreak only a few times, and generally limited himself to telling people to heed scientific experts and promising not to let politics distort the government’s response. ‘The Bush Administration did a good job of creating the infrastructure so that we can respond,’ Obama said at the start of the pandemic, and then echoed the SOHCO by urging families, ‘Wash your hands when you shake hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference.’ At no time did Obama recommend particular medical treatments, nor did he forecast specifics about when the pandemic would end.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has another acronym with the same pronunciation but only four letters - a SOCO is a Single Overarching Communication Outcome. It appears in Setting Communication Objectives: SOCO Module D1.

There is an article in the December 2017 issue of Toastmaster magazine by Joel Schwartzberg titled Get to the Point. He also says that for a stronger impact a statement should have just a single point.    

An 1883 Currier and Ives image of The Champion Slugger came from the Library of Congress.

Hey! Look at me! I am somebody!

Not long ago I received an email from an organization I had never heard of (VDGOOD Professional Association) that informed me I somehow was going to receive recognition at their 4th International Scientist Awards on Engineering, Science, and Medicine to be held in Chennai, India in February 2020.

That email is shown above. Of course, I will not be attending what presumably was an annual event. But when I looked on their Research Awards web page, I found they had listed four other sets of awards in September and November of 2019, and both January and April of 2020. They seem to be handing them out almost as fast as an Indian restaurant can cook up dosas.

I don’t know how they came up with VDGOOD for their organization name. VD is the older English acronym for a venereal disease. More recently it is called a sexually transmitted disease or STD, but either an STD or VD is not good – it is terrible.

About four decades ago I got a letter from a royally-named book publisher inviting me to apply for inclusion in a hardback book of biographies of notable people in the region, titled something like You Are Who in the Midwest. I sent them my bio, and they told me I would be included. Then they sold me a copy of the book. Later on, at a coffee break where I worked, I asked others if they were invited too. We deduced the book publisher must have acquired a copy of the directory for TMS (currently The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society) - and sent an invitation to every member.  

It turned out there were other regional editions of You are Who for the Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest. Then they told me I could be in a more expensive book titled You Are Who in the United States (which I did not buy). If I had, I suppose I also would have been told that I could be in an even more expensive book, You are Who in the World.

An image by Carol Highsmith of Felix de Weldon’s Waving Girl statue came from the Library of Congress.

The joy of acronyms or initialisms – and the heartbreak of RAS Syndrome

Acronyms are a compact way for describing things. On July 5, 2019 I blogged about how in a speech The first time you use an acronym you need to define it.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines an acronym as:

“a word (such as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term.”

and then adds it also means:

“An abbreviation (such as FBI) formed from initial letters: INITIALISM.”

Their entry for initialism further explains:

“Acronym is a fairly recent word, dating from the 1940s, although acronyms existed long before we gave them that name. The term was preceded in English by the word initialism, meaning an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of a phrase, and which has been in use since the late 19th century.

Some people feel strongly that acronym should only be used for terms like NATO, which is pronounced as a single word, and that initialism should be used if the individual letters are all pronounced distinctly, as with FBI. Our research shows that acronym is commonly used to refer to both types of abbreviations.”

An acronym may change over time. In eastern Idaho there is what currently is known just as the  Idaho National Laboratory (INL) - pronounced eye-null. Before 2005 it instead was known as the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) - pronounced eye-kneel. Before 1997 it was known as the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) - pronounced eye-nell. When it began in 1949 it instead was the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS).  

Triple-letters are a special subset of acronyms. Let’s look at those from the first half of the alphabet. We begin with the American Automobile Association (AAA). Next comes the Better Business Bureau (BBB), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and Direct Distance Dialing (DDD). Then there are Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) a disease, Family Food Fight (FFF) an American reality cooking competition television series, Girls, Guns and Glory (GGG) a former band name, Hash House Harriers (HHH) a running group, the Insurance Information Institute (III), Japanese Jujitsu (JJJ), the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLL), and the Million Marijuana March (MMM). The vowels are completed by Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and the Union of UK Unicyclists (UUU).

But there also is the heartbreaking RAS Syndrome (redundant acronym syndrome) which you should avoid. An article by Mark Memmott at NPR on January 6, 2015 titled Do You Suffer from RAS Syndrome? explained how:

“At her favorite gourmet market last week, Korva went to the ATM machine, inserted her card, squinted at the LCD display, entered her PIN number and withdrew cash to pay for her RAS Syndrome therapy.”

The first time you use an acronym you need to define it

At the LinkedIn Official Toastmasters Members Group I recently found a post with a link to an article on June 19, 2019 at the website for the Operational Excellence Society titled Five leadership styles behind the success of giant MNCs. But the authors never bothered to define what that Three Letter Acronym (TLA) meant. If you didn’t know, then you would have to look it up. In biz jargon it is an acronym for a Multi-National Corporation. What else could MNC mean? Here are ten more possibilities:

Macadamia Nut Cookie

Major Non-Conformity

Masonry Non-Combustible

Maternal and Neonatal Care

Media Nusantara Citra

Missouri Nursing Coalition

Mobile Network Code

Modified Numerical Control

Mother Nature Calls

Mythical National Championship

MNC as an acronym for Multi-National Corporation is not what you might expect - Initial Letters of Three Words (ILTW). Instead it is made from Initial Letters of Two Words and a Hyphenated Prefix (ILTWHP), as are MNC for both Major Non-Conformity and Masonry Non-Combustible.

By the way, Macadamia Nut Cookie was a code name once used by Google for a version of the Android operating system on mobile phones. Media Nusantara Citra is an Indonesian Media company. ILTW might also mean that I Like To Watch.

How should you pronounce the acronym SHRM – of the Society for Human Resource Management?

The American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA) was founded way back in 1948. (Its two-vowel acronym might be pronounced ASS-PAW). Then, in 1989, the organization changed its name to the Society for Human Resource Management. That is an unpronounceable acronym consisting of four consonants. An implicit vowel (red) has to be added somewhere between them to get a pronounceable word, as shown above. The best choice is an E – resulting in the nickname for Sherman, SHERM, as shown in green. That’s what appears in a recent ‘HR Experts’ TV commercial on YouTube.

But another choice is SHRUM, or ‘shroom, a contraction representing the noun mushroom. Mushroom Management is a derogatory phrase usually defined by something like:

“Keep them in the dark, feed them sh*t, watch them grow, and when they’ve grown enough can them. “

An image of mushrooms was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

Pearls Before Swine cartoon about acronyms for the fear of missing out (FOMO), and four other fears

On November 10, 2018 there was a Pearls Before Swine cartoon about five acronyms. As shown above, one was FOMO, which really does mean the Fear Of Missing Out. The other four were humorous but commonly refer to something different.

FOBO refers to Front Office Back Office rather than Fear Of Being Oblong. FOCO refers to a business that is Franchise Owned (and) Company Operated rather than Fear Of Carefree Otters. FODO really is the Fear Of Disappointing Others rather than Fear Of Demoralizing Oatmeal, although there is another cartoon called The Oatmeal. FOFO means to Find Out For Oneself rather than Fear Of Family Occasions.

I easily came up with another three (shown above). The usual source for an urban legend is a Friend Of A Friend.

Bad advice about getting rid of instruction manuals

When I log off my Hotmail account, I get to view gems like an article from Bob Larkin at Best Life on July 10, 2018 titled 50 things no man over 50 should own. Item # 23 was:

“Young guys cling to their electronics manuals with white knuckles, terrified they’ll need them if something goes wrong with their TV or computer. But by 50, you realize those manuals are pretty much useless after awhile. If you don’t know where the on-off switch is by now, you never will."

After setting up that electronic gizmo you won’t need the quick start guide anymore. They showed you where to plug in the cables, and how to find the power switch. Toss it.

But either now or much later the full instruction manual (which you might have to download) can be very handy. On May 20, 2018 I blogged about More nightlight technology – default settings and doohickeys. That post discussed how I searched the .pdf file of the manual for my new Roku TV to find how to shut off the annoying bright white LED. On a computer there might be a motherboard battery that eventually needs replacement. You really should RFTM (Read That Fine Manual).

My Weber natural gas grill quit working early this summer. When I looked in the manual I found out that to get at (and clean) the air inlet screens for the burners I just had to pull off the control knobs and remove the horizontal sheet metal cover.  

The man reading was adapted from an image at the Library of Congress.

ATK and RDX both are acronyms with multiple meanings

A few days ago I received an email from America’s Test Kitchen titled Don’t miss the first ever ATK Seattle EATS festival! (I am on their mailing list because I bought my wife a copy of their TV Show Cookbook for her birthday). But when I think of the acronym ATK, it means the stock trading symbol for Alliant Techsystems – who in 2001 had acquired Thiokol and later became Orbital ATK. Thiokol is famous for having made the huge Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters, one of which is displayed horizontally in front their Utah facility west of Brigham City, as shown above. The top image had appeared in my May 26, 2008 blog post titled “Rocket science” for speech topics.

At a stop sign last week I noticed an Acura RDX. That luxury crossover sport utility vehicle (SUV) first appeared in 2007, as shown above. It was one of many vehicles (including my Honda Fit) which had defective Takata air bag inflators – that were recalled because some had exploded when activated. I had blogged about the recall on April 14, 2016 in a post titled How not to communicate – Honda told me my car is literally da bomb.

I don’t think those in marketing at Acura bothered to check what else the acronym RDX could mean. But from way back in the 1940s RDX also referred to the Research Department eXplosive more powerful than TNT - developed by the British. I had read about RDX in the 1968 M.I.T. Press paperback version of James Phinney Baxter 3 rd’s 1946 book about the World War II Office of Scientific Research and Development, Scientists Against Time. In his chapter on New Explosives and Propellants he described how 340 tons per day of RDX was produced by Tennessee Eastman in a huge plant near the town of Kingsport. A mixture called Torpex which contained 42% RDX, 40% TNT, and 18% powdered aluminum was used in the gigantic 12,000 lb. Tallboy bomb shown above.