From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 9 14:37:27 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0E7A16A4CE for ; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:37:26 +0000 (GMT) Received: from sccrmhc11.comcast.net (sccrmhc11.comcast.net [204.127.202.55]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACC9043D48 for ; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:37:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from zettel@acm.org) Received: from [192.168.0.6] (bgp966574bgs.derbrn01.mi.comcast.net[68.41.108.205]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc11) with ESMTP id <20040709143721011009g0fre>; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:37:26 +0000 From: Leonard Zettel To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 10:38:52 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200407091038.52304.zettel@acm.org> Subject: Acronyms believed harmful X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:37:27 -0000 With apologies to Edsger Dijkstra, RIP. I am probably pissing into the wind with this one, but I feel honor-bound to try.... In my (undoubtedly unhumble) opinion the worst style-rot to attack the English language in the last fifty years is the unrestricted proliferation of unnecessary acronyms in the technical literature. Things like DTD are not English, they are jargon! They place an unnecessary burden on the reader. This burden falls most heavily on newbies and (I would imagine) people to whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language - exactly the people who most need the help of clear documentation. At a minimum I plead for the following rule: all uses of acronyms in any document should include the term fully spelled out at the first appearance of said acronym. Given the text completion and search-and- replace capabilities of most text processing systems an even better rule would be to ban them altogether. =A0 =A0-LenZ-