We like to think of ourselves as "sticklers" really; "pedants" has such
a pejorative tone these days. That lovely lady Lynn Truss used
stickler and I think I shall go along with her.. ;-)
I must confess that I had not heard of the word "initialism", only
"initials", so I can't take any credit really :-)
Chris
On 7 Jan 2005, at 09:59, Piers Hemy wrote:
> Pedants, you say?
>
> I had thought the only meaning of acronym is what you term an
> initialism. I
> hadn't seen that word before, but find that it "is an abbreviation
> made up
> of initial letters that are all pronounced separately, for example UN
> for
> United Nations" whereas an acronym is "a word formed from the initials
> or
> other parts of several words, for example 'NATO', from the initial
> letters
> of 'North Atlantic Treaty Organization'".
>
> Thank you Mark for teaching me something I didn't know - and to Chris
> who
> knew it all along.
>
> --
> Piers
>
<|_:-)_|>
C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
+44 (0)7092 251126
www.threeshoes.co.uk
homepage.mac.com/zuiko
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