More from the NYT

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 12, 2012, at 11:22 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Sounds like time for an acroretronym

Isn't "bac(k)ronym" the technical term for that?  Or it is too hard to decide whether it's spelled with or without a <k>>?

LH

> of "Gotcha."
>
> "Government of Tampa, City Housing Authority"?
>
> (Remember that retroacronyms are often extraordinarily lame: somehow it
> makes them more believable.)
>
> JL
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:49 AM, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: More from the NYT
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Martin Kaminer wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I was surprised to see in today's article entitled "Alone in Public
>>>> Housing, With a Spare Bedroom"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/housing-authority-also-has-an-undercrowding-problem.html
>>>> that New York City Housing Authority was spelled 'Nycha' rather than
>>>> in all caps.  All local policy wonks (and one imagines facility
>>>> residents) refer to it as /Nai-tS^/ but seeing it in print converted
>>>> from an acronym to a word seemed a bit jarring.  I don't think one can
>>>> do case-sensitive searches on the NYT archives but from my cursory
>>>> perusal this seems to be a first.
>>>
>>> The NYTimes favors "NYCHA" but also uses "N.Y.C.H.A" and "Nycha".
>>>
>>> "Nycha" was used in three of 55 uses in the past 12 months.
>>
>> "Nycha" is an artifact of the New York Times Style Guide, which
>> dictates that "acronyms of five or more letters are
>> upper-and-lowercased: _Unicef_; _Unesco_; _Alcoa_; _Awacs_."
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=CnwIVkAQgFwC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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