Initialisms rant

Jutter

New member
Dec 30, 2012
478
0
Not gonna happen! Won't do it! I flat out refuse.
Have me waterboarded by the CIA, my nuts roasted by the Taliban... it won't work. Even if you threaten to put me on a Paula Deen diet, I will remain calling pinballtables by their full friggin' name.
A scenario where one would have to memorize truckloads of initialisms, in order to decypher communication, in order to (shudders) fi... f... BLUCH!! fit in. Sorry, I threw up in my mouth a little there. This is a scenario I won't contribute or cater to.

The Internet Pinball DataBase is currently sporting 5,672 games. Even if a mere 10% of those were worth mentioning, that would still be an insane amount of initialisms to decrypt. Even the relatively puny Pinball Arcade with it's collection of 32 titles and growing, is slowely but surely wandering into that territory where persistent use of initialisms becomes obnoxious. What is this, an arcade or a @*#$!! millitary base?

Okay, I feel better now.
 
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Jutter

New member
Dec 30, 2012
478
0
Is lol an initialism or an acronym? Damn now you have me wondering about that.
 
N

netizen

Guest
Put simply: Acronyms are initialisms, but not all initialisms are acronyms.

An initialism is any set of letters commonly used together, where each letter stands for a word. Examples include SUV, CIA, and (of course) DFTBA.

An acronym is an initialism that you pronounce as a word, such as LASER or RADAR, but sadly not DFTBA.

Unless you start pronouncing it "duft-ba", which now that it's ocurred to me, I think I may actually start doing.

http://nerdfighters.ning.com/forum/topics/acronym-vs-initialism
 

DeeEff

New member
Feb 28, 2013
495
0
Is lol an initialism or an acronym? Damn now you have me wondering about that.
Initialism, unless you pronounce it "loll".

P.S. Nice rant, and I agree with you 100%... until I start writing a post and don't feel like typing "Tales of the Arabian Nights" or "Red & Ted & Jed & Ed's Road Show". :eek: I'll try to work on that. Maybe. :)
 
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Jutter

New member
Dec 30, 2012
478
0
But back to my rant; as the list of titles in the Pinball Arcade grows longer, the need to decypher initials, especially if there's a whole list of them, is bound to anoy some. Even if only slightly.
 

SKILL_SHOT

Banned
Jul 11, 2012
3,659
1
when its time to enter initials do you just start frothing at the mouth? AAAaaaah I have to abbreviate my name! AAAAAaaaargh! :p
 

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