That’s true, but it’s also true that within a small community sometimes acronyms are necessary. Like, imagine NASA:
“Jones exited the AL in his AES but the C4ISP flagged an error either in the LSPG or WFCA.”
vs.
“Jones exited the air lock in his Anthropometric Extra Vehicular Activity Suit but the Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Information Systems Protection system flagged an error in the Life Support Power Generation System or Water Flow Control Assembly”
Insiders can use the acronyms to be much more efficient. Outsiders probably wouldn’t even understand what they’re talking about even if they did spell things out fully.
The only problem is when acronyms leak and what’s a well known and clear acronym in one group becomes a confusing one to another group, or worse is confused for a different acronym from a different group.
Acronyms are a pet peeve of mine. Basically useless and now you need tribal knowledge to understand what the hell someone is talking about.
That’s true, but it’s also true that within a small community sometimes acronyms are necessary. Like, imagine NASA:
“Jones exited the AL in his AES but the C4ISP flagged an error either in the LSPG or WFCA.”
vs.
“Jones exited the air lock in his Anthropometric Extra Vehicular Activity Suit but the Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Information Systems Protection system flagged an error in the Life Support Power Generation System or Water Flow Control Assembly”
Insiders can use the acronyms to be much more efficient. Outsiders probably wouldn’t even understand what they’re talking about even if they did spell things out fully.
The only problem is when acronyms leak and what’s a well known and clear acronym in one group becomes a confusing one to another group, or worse is confused for a different acronym from a different group.
If the intended reader is a regular person just use normal words, even if it’s not 100 % accurate.
All three ways don’t mean much to me as an outsider, but the last one at least paints a somewhat understandable picture.
TMA is a problem. (too many acronyms)
That’s My Ass!
The Mighty Ape!
Somehow, 10% of the acronyms reduce to “TLA”. Including the very nice self-explanatory “three letter acronym”.
Why are you being so wordy!
“Aaappom. BU and now you need TK to understand WTH someone is TA.”
AAPPOMBUANYNTKTUWTHSITA
They say /c/fuck_ai butttt damn for ambiguous acronyms…
Exactly! They say AI but what do they mean? GPTs, LLMs, GANs, CNNs…do they hate RAG as well?
/s