I had occasion yesterday to run into yet again a thinly veiled bureaucrat (or wannabee) on a political forum. These people seem to patrol such venues as if on guard duty to protect and extend their turf by obfuscating almost every idea that is contrary to the guidelines of their drab little bureaucratic departments.
Acronyms pile up everywhere today BLT's, PB&J's and OJ in the kitchen; GTO's, RV's, and SUV's in the garage,
We turn on the VCR or put on a CD by REM, ELO or UB40; in the bedroom we slip out of our BVD's and cop some Z's. Yuppies and WASPS, LSD and PCP, TGIF and BYOB, CBGB's and MTV , well you get the idea.
Most of them barely save any syllables over their spelled-out equivalents.
Back to yesterday's brief interlude with the modern day luddite:
His remark was- "Yes, cause a big piece of property like that right on the Avenue and right on the LRT line would never be used for... oh, I dunno... something like a TOD? NEVER!!! Note the sarcasm."
O.K. I say, what is a TOD?
The next bureauclod says: "TOD = transit-oriented development"
and goes on to add that "everybody knows that"
Well for the rest of us that's simply not true.
We know "parking lot" pretty well but TOD???
Come on, give us all a break and stop with the initialisms.
For the sake of brevity, give us the full words and meaning if necessary and then use the initalisms etc in the body of your sentences. (if you must!)
That's called common sense and it's akin to common decency, exemplary communication skills and will most likely bring you more respect than the current use of bafflekak.
"acronyms are the slang of a textual world" To quote this worthy scholar:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/acronyms.html
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