Re: Acronyms Et Al. (was: Last Call: Instructions to Request for Comments (RFC) Authors to BCP)

[John Stracke <jstracke at centive.com>]

Tomson Eric (Yahoo.fr) wrote:

> - an acronym is a word composed of initials ; e.g.: ASAP, LASER, NATO,
> OSI, RADAR, SCUBA, are well-known acronyms. They sound like words, while
> they are actually groups of initials.
>
> - initials are the first letters of words ; e.g.: IETF, CIA, FBI, IBM,
> RFC, TCP, are well-known initials, too complex to be used as acronyms.
>  
I never heard this distinction before today.  It seems like a pretty 
strange hair to split in a written forum like the IETF.  It boils down 
to how hard a series of letters is to pronounce in English; but most of 
our communication doesn't get pronounced.

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