Monday, March 29, 2004

Macquarie Dictionary has something useful to say

Further to my earlier comment about acronyms a usage note from the Macquarie.

acronym noun a word formed from the initial letters of other words, as radar (from radio detection and ranging) or ANZAC (from Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). initialism [ACR(O)- + Greek (Doric) onyma name; modelled on HOMONYM]
Usage: Acronyms tend to start out in life as capitals which then reduce to lower case as the word formed becomes accepted as a lexical item and people cease to analyse it into its component parts. However, if there is the possibility of confusion with some other homograph, this process is arrested. Thus DINK became dink, but AIDS has retained its capitalised status, so as not to be confused with aids.


That said, I know there are some who will strongly disagree.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Siding Contractors Town 'n' Country said...

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10:39 PM  

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