Well Understanding Bees will certainly have more of an understanding of acronyms than dead bees now
Your reply, Dani, “
Well Understanding Bees will certainly have more of an understanding of acronyms than dead bees now”, made me smile. It has indeed been an eye-opener for me to experience the meandering path that the comments on this thread have taken. First of all, I appreciate the comments on the likely answer to my original question.
When it comes to the matter of acronyms being used in publications or documents, authors need to recognise the level of knowledge and understanding of their target audience. There are very many abbreviations or acronyms which have found their way into our everyday lives, and which are indispensable. Just think of AM and PM when it comes to reporting the time of day, or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which is referenced on a world-wide basis.
We use words –
we need them – to communicate. With the advancement of technology there has been the need to find the most appropriate word, or perhaps to invent a word, to describe the subject under discussion. It is also part of human nature to try to find an easier or better way to achieve our goals. We abbreviate commonly used words so that they become part of the language – for example we talk about “phone calls” rather than “telephone calls”.
But sometimes there are needs for abbreviations to become part of the language. For example everyone knows what TV is, and sometimes we even use the unabbreviated form “television”. In this discussion thread, somebody referred to “scuba” diving, when perhaps they should really have called it SCUBA diving, where SCUBA is an acronym for “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus”. Many documents might become very tedious if acronyms were forbidden, if we consider examples such as the following:
RADAR – Radio Detection And Ranging,
LASER – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,
LED – Light Emitting Diode.
So what factors should determine the use of acronyms? The preceding examples are acronyms which have become part of our language. They are understood by virtually everyone. These acronyms have become words in their own right, and sometimes without being capitalized.
Whenever acronyms are used in technical documents, or in discussions of niche subjects, writers have an obligation to explain exactly what they are talking about when they use acronyms. It is perfectly understandable that Ham Radio operators might use a plethora of abbreviations. During my working life as a computer programmer and systems analyst my environment was like an “alphabet soup” of acronyms, which sometimes required carefully determining which of two quite different values was being referred to. Please pardon this brief digression, which IBM database users might enjoy. We had SSA, and SSB; PSA and PSB; and a whole lot more, where the A’s and B’s did not provide minor distinctions. It would be like using the abbreviation “CH”, when sometimes I meant “Chalk” and sometimes I meant “Cheese”.
When it comes to beekeeping there are many concepts which we need to learn about. This forum has provided very helpful assistance on many occasions, but this has not always been the case. On the one hand, somebody said that we should use Google to find the answer; but how many times have there been disparaging, disrespectful or demeaning comments made by some members of this forum about things which have been found on the Internet?
I for one would like my contributions to this forum to be helpful and informative. I have appreciated those answers to my questions which were helpful rather than the opposite. There may be a place for well understood acronyms to be used in our discussion threads. However, if these discussions are to prove helpful to beginners there should be a willingness by contributors to give clear, concise, easily understood advice. Acronyms should be avoided unless they have been suitably explained in the same discussion.
