Acronyms

[Albert Bickford]

I certainly agree that overuse of unfamiliar acronyms and abbreviations 
makes things hard for readers.  (For the lazy writer, they can still type 
the all acronyms they want but then use search-and-replace to change them to 
the full name.)

However, when an acronym is well known, perhaps better known than the full 
name of the language, then it *is* helpful to the reader to use the acronym 
(although it probably should be explained once at the beginning of the paper 
for the occasional reader who might not know the acronym). And, when a 
technical term or other concept is thematically important in an article, I 
personally find it helpful as a reader to have an acronym or abbreviation 
introduced early on. In other words, the more frequently an acronym or 
abbreviation is used (either generally or in a particular context), the more 
helpful it is to use it and the easier it is to remember what it means. This 
also applies to how short and cryptic the abbreviation is: the more it is 
used, the more helpful it is to be short and the fewer problems it causes by 
being cryptic. (I notice this phenomenon especially when working with 
glossed texts.)

So, abbreviations are sometimes helpful, but they have to be used 
judiciously and with sensitivity to the audience.

Albert

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen" <eep at hum.ku.dk>
To: "slling list for linguists interested in signed languages" 
<slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
Sent: September 6, 2007 3:30 AM
Subject: [SLLING-L] Acronyms


>I must admit that I haven't had time to read all the contributions in  the 
>debate about acronyms, but I can't help making a small comment  now. When 
>students abbreviate terms they use often in their  assignments, I usually 
>say that abbreviations (including acronyms)  are there for the benefit of 
>the lazy writer, they are a nuisance to  the readers. Why use acronyms at 
>all and not simply the full name?  And if we write in English, we should 
>use the name in English - as  with any other language name (cf. German, 
>Dutch, Swedish, West  Greenlandic, etc.).
>
> I just finished a paper with lots of acronyms of sign languages!
>
> - Elisabeth
>
> Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen
> Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics
> University of Copenhagen
> Njalsgade 120
> DK-2300 Copenhagen S.
> Denmark
> tel. #45 3532 8664
> eep at hum.ku.dk
>
>
>
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