Re: Use of acronyms (was RE: purl.net/net/cp)

Thanks for your Smiley, James - am glad someone picked up humour  
pointers, such as the longest sentence I have ever posted (to this  
list) and the ref. to more time on computers than is healthy  
(unavoidable in our jobs).

If I were to make a real point about acronyms/abbreviations, it would  
be to celebrate the rise of alternatives, such as the punctuation- 
based smiley and number-based shorthand such as +1 (assent) and -1  
(dissent) and the like, because such are equally clear (unambiguous)  
in any language and offend nobody.
mg

On 24 Oct 2007, at 05:05, scríobh James Kass:


> On 24 Oct 2007, at 05:05, James Kass wrote:
> Marion Gunn wrote,
>
>
>> On the plus side, Philippe, you may safely take the explosion of
>> English-based acronyms as a sure indicator of the growing number of
>> monoglot English speaker so scared that their language is becoming
>> international (not just theirs to use, but everybody's, especially in
>> the case of those of them who still harbour a genuine horror of
>> polyglots, which we must respect as real fear to them), that they
>> feel a genuine need to club together behind acronyms and the like,
>> which is silly in the extreme, but please accept it may be better for
>> your sanity to see that as being really more their problem than
>> yours, as they clearly must spend more time on computers than is
>> healthy for any brain.:-)
>>
>>
>
> Couple thoughts, or so.
>
> That is a very long sentence.
>
> Even though there are dedicated Unicode characters (☺,☻) for
> the "smiley", most people still use the ASCII approximation.
>
> Is the stereotype of the provincial English speaker who expects
> everyone in the whole world to learn English now being replaced
> by a group fear that the whole world will?
>
> Most of these "shorthand" items are technically abbreviations
> rather than acronyms.  (Yes, it's a nit-pick, but this *is* a
> technical list.  <smile>)
>
> Best regards,
>
> James Kass
>

--
Marion Gunn
[email protected]



- -
Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* [email protected] * [email protected] *