Are acronyms used too often in tech?

Hackerspace
#1

acronym n.
an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (e.g., ASCII, NASA ).

initialism n
an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (e.g., CPU ).

word salad n
a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases, specifically (in psychiatry) as a form of speech indicative of advanced schizophrenia.

#2

Yes. So much that they have run out and reuse them. :slight_smile:

STUN: Serial Tunneling
STUN: Simple Traversal of Unspecified NAT
STUN: Session Traversal Utilities for NAT

It’s a bit annoying at times.

2 Likes
#3

Cut the Code: Why Speaking In Technical Jargon Is Not Making You Look Smarter
from https://www.business.com/articles/cut-the-code-why-speaking-in-technical-jargon-is-not-making-you-look-smarter/

When To Use Jargon and When Not To

As Nicole Radzwill point out in Quality and Innovation, "The use of jargon—or the avoidance of jargon—can either communicate competence in a field or alienate people who need to know more about it. Awareness of whether a term or phrase is jargon can help us understand whether we are communicating accurately.”

Here are some tips on how to communicate more accurately.

  • Identify your audience and speak their language. CIOs speak differently to their technical teams than they do to “regular” employees (or at least they should).
  • Don’t dress things up. It’s actually kind of amazing how well plain language stands out from the onslaught of jargon. People tend to pay more attention when they can actually follow what you’re saying.
  • Keep it short. Short sentences are easier to understand than long, convoluted ones. Short speeches are more memorable than lengthy, meandering ones. The classic example is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It’s about 270 words long.
  • Use simple words. This doesn’t mean “talking down” to people as if they are children. It means using plain, to-the-point language. Maybe instead of telling people how to “execute a strategy” you explain “how to get something done.”
  • Avoid buzzwords, acronyms and anything that sounds “highfalutin.” If you know everyone in the room is going to know what your jargon means (the CIO talking to the tech team), go ahead and buzz away. Just don’t fall into the habit. If you go home and ask your spouse how the day scoped out and if they encountered any problems in navigation structure in getting anywhere, you may need to join a 12-step program.
  • Edit. Mozart supposedly wrote a symphony in one draft. He is the exception. Think of how you can cut at least half of whatever it is you are going to say. That will be music to the ears of most people.
2 Likes
#4

YES! This! :grimacing:

1 Like
#5

because no matter how many times we write documentation that is simple and clear. No one ever does

Then tells us to #STFU and reboot it for them.

#6

You’ve got your TLAs but those ran out, resulting in ETLAs, but even those ran out of address space so now we have HETLAs.

#7

PCMCIA

People Cannot Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

5 Likes
#8

My wife’s first job out of college was at Johnson Space Center. She was in a meeting in which a heated argument ensued. As an introvert she spent the duration quietly listening. She quickly realized what it took the participants an hour to notice: They were arguing about two completely unrelated topics that had overlapping acronyms.

5 Likes
#9

Johnson Controls is known for our acronyms. We have an actual book with them, yes a book. I wish I could show them but I can’t.

2 Likes
#10

My favorite is a dead scanner interface technology.

TWAIN - Technology Without an Interesting Name.

1 Like
#11

Not really tech, but ACRONYM is a brand name of a specific type of laminated nylon fabric. It stands for something, but IDK WTF it is.:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#12

It’s ridiculous. Especially when organizations or standards are involved. It’s an eyesore. For example, the vlabs at my college are provided by the NISGTC DoL TAACCCT grant and it’s so ugly. Plus, this october I’m going to the NTXISSACSC6.

(even when i first started my studies, all of the permutations of I, S, and O blew my mind)

1 Like
#13

:rofl::blankspace:

1 Like
#14

Even worse: Some fields that specifically make up names for items.

“Grab a junior with a spud to throw on the grid, but leave a couple C47s hanging off the doors in case they want to gel it later”

will get you a VERY different result if you ask a short order cook vs a gaffer.

4 Likes
#15

It’s even worse in telecom. Each department has its own jargon, coining entirely new terms for well-understood things Because Reasons™.

#16

don’t remind me … Telecos are the worst at that but FinTech is about as bad and I don’t think they do it to “be smart” or “exclusive” just that the mindsets are very; “Hurry up and wait” kind of mind.

#17

Of course we’re all forgetting that the Jargon file is up to version 4.4.7 and that this isn’t just something exclusive to tech.

Finance, Restaurant, Entertainment, Light/Heavy Industry, Medical, Legal. They all have their own “language” different from the average burger flipper. Why? well they need to communicate clearly and distinctly within their individual peers and non-peers. how did this happen? well they just kept using the correct terms for things while the rest of the popouls started to use words like “thingz” and my personal annoyance/chuckle “da dar dem beer holder” for a Compact Disk Drive Caddy. Which by the way search for Compact Disk and one is going to get everything else but those reflective circular plastic “thinz” which go into “da dar dem beer holder”.

By the way there’s even a dictionary for common people speak. its called Urban Dictionary. Smart people have to use it about 65% of the time to understand anything the most cring worthy of ageist terms, “millennial” and/or “hipster” or even what most other say.

At lease with something like “NISGTC” one can easily distinguish that its a standard governed by the Network Development Group which consist of professionals that one can trust vs a keyboard cowboy who stack overflow their way through an interview.

Which again brings me back to my post earlier:

because no matter how many times we write documentation that is simple and clear with common speech. No one ever reads the manual and others reinvents the wheel five minutes later just because everyone rather say hey smart person make this work for me instead of investing the time to understand it.

#18

Of course this whole thread is now starting feel like

and a lot of

Political-Theater

1 Like
#19

Military. Some of the most colorful language.

1 Like
#20

After being a tech writer for a couple of decades, I can’t tell you how much I detest acronyms. Yes, my past career was writing books that nobody read. :open_mouth:

1 Like