I think it’s an important point that jargon/abbreviation etiquette should be based on common sense according to the nature of the thread. In a thread that’s likely to attract a general readership, it’s courteous to take more care to spell out anything technical or specialized, because we want an inclusive conversation. Whereas in a thread where the entire focus is some specialized area, it behooves someone unfamiliar with the area who wants to participate to do some googling themselves to familiarize themselves with terminology, or to ask politely for an explanation. Nobody expects that every thread must operate at “beginner” level.
I’d be more favorably inclined toward the described behavior if it was coming from someone who was actually trying to understand or participate in the threads in question rather than someone who admits to not actually caring about any of that. But people can get away with all kinds of behavior so long as they do it in a way that flatters ~🌸~board culture~🌸~.
I have been a bit jerky and overly snarky at times in my complaints about this issue. That’s a fair cop.
I wish I could be like some folks here who are so smoothly considerate they make a put-down sound like the nicest compliment. I’m not one of those people.
I’d love to write like that but I get way too carried away with my feelings, get tunnel-vision, and thrust inelegantly but directly at my target. Mea culpa.
That being said I stand by all my comments on this matter—even if some were low art.
If I need to I can Google it. That’s not the point. The point is that the author is forcing the reader to do extra work; to look up a term he/she shouldn’t have to. Ambiguity is no friend to the effective writer, and it’s surely not a friend to the reader.
All of those acronyms are used in this thread without definition, and yet it doesn’t seem to have caused problems. When an acronym has virtually become a word for the writer, it can be difficult to remember that the acronym might not be familiar to others.
It’s fine to politely ask for clarification of an acronym - simply doing so is a gentle reminder that not everyone knows the same ones. So I don’t unreservedly endorse this pitting. However, I will observe that doggedly (and sometimes rudely) asking for every single acronym to be spelled out smacks of a crusade rather than genuine curiosity.
But that’s just the thing - the SD (Straight Dope) is comprised of people of different ages, nationalities, and backgrounds. What is so obvious to one person that they don’t even notice they are using an acronym might be obscure to someone else. So, like I said, if someone truly doesn’t understand an acronym, they should feel free to ask what it means.
However, you really should not set yourself up as the arbiter of which acronyms are “widely known” and which aren’t. We can’t possibly always “know [the] audience” here, because it is such a varied one.
We’d all like to draw a line between “acronyms that are so blindingly obvious they don’t need spelling out” and “acronyms that should be spelled out as a courtesy to readers.” However, no two posters will draw the line in the exact same spot.
Becoming affronted because someone else’s line is different from yours (or because they simply forgot that a term they use every day isn’t necessarily widely known outside their profession) seems silly to me.
I’m sure I’ve accidentally used acronyms that were obvious to me, but not to others. In fact I recently asked in another thread if “SOP” was obscure - turns out, it apparently is. I honestly would not have guessed that, as the term has been common knowledge for years within the business circles I inhabit. If I used the term here and got a snarky request for clarification, or was chastised that I should “know my audience” - yeah, I’d be mildly annoyed by that.
It’s pretty obvious that the people posting to this thread are not technical writers.
I’m a lawyer now, and though I have to deal with legal Latin, as a former technical writer, I do my best to explain to my clients that the [Latin name] rule I’m using really means “the matter has been settled and we cannot re-litigate it” (res judicata) or “you cannot benefit from an illegal act” (ex turpi causa non oritur actio). This isn’t too different from what I did when I was a technical writer.
Back then, I had to convince engineers (who had to sign off on the manuals I wrote) that end-users weren’t going to be impressed by unexplained acronyms and initialisms. So, for example:
Engineer: “So the user sees the C: prompt on the CRT…”
Me: “What’s a CRT?”
Engineer: “The screen. The monitor screen. ‘Cathode Ray Tube.’ Like a TV.”
Me: “So why don’t we just call it a screen in the documentation?”
Engineer: “That’s not technical enough.”
Me: “Our end users are not technical people; they are ordinary people, who watch TV through a TV screen. Not through a “CRT.” Even though that may be true, no Joe or Jane Average TV watcher, watches MASH or WKRP or Lou Grant through a “CRT.” They watch their TV screen. Why not give them instructions for something they know very well, in terms they understand?”
Engineer: “But the term screen is not technical enough!”
That was the early 1980s, but I’d suggest the point stands today. At any rate, as a technical writer who had to deal with obstinate engineers who believed that everybody knew what their obscure initialisms meant, a compromise emerged: write the term in full the first time, followed by the acronym/initialism. For example, “Your cathode ray tube (CRT) displays the C: prompt. Enter _____ …, and the CRT will display …”
Seems an easy compromise. Perhaps we should adopt it.
I 100% support I Love Me. Using non-established acronyms and expecting the reader to figure it out is jerkish behaviour. You only need to spell it out once to establish it and than can use it multiple times for brevity if you wish. Since you only post once and the post is then read hundreds of times, the poster should do the extra work to be coherent, not the reader.
For excessive legalese, even if it’s a legal thread there will be some people reading along, so you should at least define unfamiliar terms, even if everybody actually posing in the thread know what they mean.
This, too. Really, the way I see it, it’s almost like he just scans threads for more than one capital letter together, in order to complain. It’s both some level of stalkerish behaviour - only for a post-style rather than a poster - and it’s a form of junior modding. In any case, something jerky.
“The problem isn’t that ILMVI asks about what an acronym means. The problem is that he’s an obnoxious dick about it.”
Thats it.
His requesting clarification is not to improve communication but to jump up and down and yell “look at meeeee”. The unknown acronym is much less disruptive than the obnoxious post dumped in the middle of the thread.
Plus the idea that there are “obviously” ok ones to use snd “obviously” bad ones to use is extremely myopic, again indicating this is less about improving communication for the board than banging the drum on his own pet peeve.
Sure, undefined acronyms can be annoying, but it’s a problem easily solved when it happens. People should make an effort the define them, but my guess is no one is leaving them undefined because they think no one will get it and it’s some power play. It’s like people that get offended if you use a vocab word they don’t know.
You don’t need to wag your finger and be obnoxious because you and the poster briefly didn’t have a shared metal image of common acronyms.
