I’m working on a parent education project on the subject of immunization, and I’m writing the portion of the material which deals with the global eradication of smallpox. I couldn’t remember if I should pronounce WHO as the word ‘who,’ or say each letter individually. When I looked it up, I found this source which says that I should spell it out. But the rule seems to be arbitrary; when I looked up other acronyms which spell words (such as ACORN, it said they should be pronounced as the word they spell. There must be some rule that governs this—what is it? Why are some acronyms spelled out and others pronounced as words?
Bonus question: does anybody know the exact date of the 1980 press conference in which the WHO announced the global elimination of smallpox? Surprisingly enough, I can’t seem to find this information anywhere, despite a considerable amount of searching.
Quoth Wikipedia: “The global eradication of smallpox was certified by a commission of scientists on December 9, 1979 and endorsed by the World Health Assembly on May 8, 1980.”
Jeebus—I really need to switch back to a caffeinated brand of coffee. :smack: Uh…thanks. Although that may not be the actual date of the press conference. Still, it’s good enough that I can work it into the material I’m preparing and just use that.
I believe May 7 was the actual date of the press conference. The New York Times published an article on May 8, 1980 that begins, “UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., May 7 – Smallpox, one of the deadliest and oldest viral diseases of humans, has been eradicated from the earth, World Health Organization officials said today in a news conference broadcast here from Geneva.”
There’s no rule. The English language doesn’t work via rules, only by usage. Some acronyms convert easily into words, others get forced into words because they are used so often that people want and need an easier way to say them, and yet others never get that treatment. (And some get both pronounced and spelled out.) Vox populi. I’ve always heard WHO as who, and never as double-u, aiche, oh, for whatever that’s worth.
We’ve done the initialisms vs. acronyms debate in many threads as well. There’s no rule there either, and good writers can come down on either side. My personal view is that the distinction is utterly pointless for almost all usage. If you use acronym at all times (except for pedantic arguments about pronunciation) you always will be understood properly. That’s the only rule I follow. (And, FWIW, I’m a professional writer and editor, paid to consider such things. But I’m also a lapsed prescriptivist and a foe of the species today.)
OK, that makes sense. Nobody in their right mind would pronounce ACLU ‘ack-loo’ or UCLA ‘ook-la’ but everybody pronounces ASCI ‘ass-key.’ So you can throw the ‘if it’s not a word don’t pronounce it as a word’ rule right out the window. The converse generally doesn’t seem to be true, though—if it spells an English word, it seems to always get pronounced as that word. Prudence would seem to dictate that I should use the full term ‘World Health Organization’ for the first instance of its use in order not to confuse my audience, but pronounce the acronym as the word ‘who’ for subsequent uses if I so desire. Does this sound appropriate?
My suggestion would be to say:
The World Health Organization (who) …
That way you prompt listeners to hear “who” as World Health Organization from then on.
Just don’t write a sentence like:
Who, who held a press conference at who headquarters, where the know-how who provides when who goes there says what you expect from who, and how.
I agree, it’s arbitrary. And, I’d add, it;s also culture- and society-specific. I’ve lived in Ireland and in Australia, and I have never heard the WHO as “who”; it’s always “the WHO”, with the definite article and the letters named individually.
Still, there can be a few guidelines:
The easier it is to pronounce as a word, the more likely it is to be pronounced as a word.
Unless it’s happens to be an actual word, especially a common actual word; in that case pronouncing it as a word could confuse, and this diminishes (but does not exclude) the chance that it is pronounced as a word in practice.
Americans are more likely than other speakers of English to pronounce acronyms as words. Sometimes they convert acronyms into pronouncable word so that, e.g, FNMA becomes “Fannie Mae”. They are also given to devising acronums with pronouncability in mind. (Why is it CalPERS and not CPERS? Because “CalPERS” is easier to say.)
