I must emphasise that that was a joke. If I wasn’t so hungover it might have been better, and I might have been able to stomach the use of a smiley…
That is the wrong direction to go as well. Aside from the argument as to whether redunancy is good or evil, hopefully this will help define what redunancy is.
MLB and NFL are trademarked organization names, not the name of a sport. MLB baseball refers to the sport of baseball as played by MLB teams. Little League Baseball and Major League Baseball are two different organizations. The games played by them are MLB baseball and LLB baseball (they have slightly different rules). No redundancy, just a necessarily repeated word.
There is another common meaning for ATM besides automated teller machine but I doubt there could ever be confusion between the two based on context.
A PIN isn’t the only number but PIN can’t mean anything but a number, unless, as other posters have noted, you confuse it with the pin; again, unlikely in context.
One test for redunancy might be whether people would use the same redunancy if the initialism were fully spelled out. You could have a situation where “Major League Baseball baseball” could be used without a blink (“I caught a foul ball at the Orioles game and now I have an official Major League Baseball baseball”), but nobody would ever say “personal identification number number.”
So that it doesn’t get cold again. The insulation isn’t THAT good, you know.
It’s darkly appropriate that this redundancy thread is seeing every last one of its main points repeated over and over and over…
And VIN #.
Exactly, so is everyone listening? If you want to avoid your acronym being used redundantly, make sure that the acronym is for a part of speach that can be used like an adjective.
Hey, I been checking my spelling with spellcheck.
Hoosier grammer!
I concur. Although I, personally, avoid saying “ATM machine” or “PIN number”, I can see how the original, full expansion of the abbreviation becomes lost to conscious thought. For those two things, and possibly others, it’s pretty clear from the the context what’s meant, even if I don’t say ‘machine’ or ‘number’. If I’m talking to someone at the bank and say I need a PIN, it’s obvious that I don’t mean a small sharp piece of metal. Same thing if I ask for the ATM.
On the other hand, I don’t go SCUBA diving, but does anyone just say SCUBA without tacking on “gear” or “equipment”? “Where’s my SCUBA?” just sounds odd to me.
It helps distinguish when I am talking about Anti Tank Missiles and Automated Teller Machines. Think of the problems that could be caused when asking for an ATM so you can get money out from the bank.
ATM machine is an abomination since if you say ATM is clear what is being discussed.
Since the purpose of speech is communication, some slow-thinking folk might find “PIN number” less ambiguous than pin, which has other meanings. Though these should be clear from the context, you could cook up some scenario where it wasn’t. So PIN number, though redundant, bothers me a little less. “Input your pin. I’m not carrying a pin.” This may seem far-fetched, but I’ve seen enough little old ladies who have enough getting $20 out of the ATM as it is without additional “obstacles”. Some folks can’t set the VCR machine 
It’s darkly appropriate that this redundancy thread is seeing every last one of its main points repeated over and over and over…
Hee hee hee. CookingWithGas said “darkly appropriate”.
And on a thread fulla grammer nazis, too. 
mangeorge
Ooh I hate ATM Machine. I was going to post to thisd at work today, but I was busy working on a MSDS sheet.
A question for the grammar nazis. The GNs I associate with insist that in order to be an acronym the initials must be pronounced as a word. Therefore PIN, RADAR, SCUBA, UNICEF, UNESCO and LASER are acronyms, while NFL, CBS, ATM, and MLB would not qualify. Is this the grammar nazi position around these parts, or not? And where does NAZI fit in, anyways?
Depending on the GN ruling, what is the Gaudereian status of an OP complaining of a misused acronym if the initials in question don’t qualify?
Good point. It was on these boards that I learned the difference between an acronym and an initialism.
However, I also learned that we must be descriptive not prescriptive, and since enough people say acronym for both, it must be OK.
One thing I learned (perhaps erroniously) is that there is one board with many forums.
:dubious:
Whoosh. See prior post from *fetus.
Ahh, the ol’ Prescriptive vs Descriptive debate. Sorry folks, but PIN number will win out in the end if enough people use it. We descriptive linguists have the incredible force of a dynamic, popular, and powerful language on our side.
I mean come on. You’ve got to just accept that fact that language changes significantly over time. What is incorrect at one point in time, may come to be correct later because of common usage. Just because at the moment you happen to know the original meaning of a word (or, say, the ‘N’ in PIN), doesn’t mean that everyone else does. There are surely a great many words you use now, for which you aren’t aware of the original meaning.
“[In] Old English, meat, (or rather mete), which referred to all forms of solid food while flesh (flæsc) referred to animal tissue, and food (foda) referred to animal fodder. Meat was eventually restricted to flesh of animals, then flesh restricted to the tissue of humans and food was generalized to refer to all forms of solid food (Jeffers & Lehiste).”
No, no whoosh. Not that I’m difficult to whoosh.
I was playing along. You were last in line is all, and had the audacity to repeat the phrase. You were, in fact, brilliantly audacious. 
BTW; is this a good deal? “propane heater, 50,000-60,000, 80,000 BTU, 1 yr. old, $60.00.”
mangeorge
I hate to mention it but in the adult-film industry, ATM is a common acronym, and I’m fairly certain you’d never find the word “machine” after it.
hint: M stands for mouth