ACROS ARE OUT. ABBREVS ARE IN.
Ever since I entered the corporate world, I've noticed that people use acronyms for EVERYTHING. Maybe they think it makes them sound more knowledgeable, I dunno. I have a problem with it. Not only are you being ambiguous and confusing, but you don't even sound cool anymore; you sound like a dweeb. Acronyms are terrible things, nobody should be using them anymore, and if you do, you are basically a terrorist.
I'M GOING TO PUT MY PIN NUMBER IN THE ATM MACHINE
Over half of the people that use those acronyms use them improperly. When you do, you sound like a twit. Everybody is making fun of the way you can't speak properly. At this point already, with no further justification, most common acronyms are doing more harm than good. I don't use them often, but when I do I put my number in the cash machine; or better still, I put my num in the cash mash.
DDR
There are at least three different meanings in my field for the acronym "DDR". None of them are Dance Dance Revolution, which is what I think of every time they are used. There are even acronyms where some of the letters are acronyms themselves! I ask you what it stands for and you tell me and I still don't know what it means! I don't know about you, but usually when I speak, I do so for the purpose of having people understand what's coming out of my mouth (OK some people just like to hear the sound of their own voice; you people can say whatever you want I guess). Using acronyms, at least one of these two things is happening: 1. you aren't being understood; 2. you are using more energy explaining yourself the way you otherwise would (so what's the point?).
Clearly, we as a society need to address the issue that we've now figured out acronyms are not an effective way of communicating. Acro-ing something is clearly not the way to hash things in our language (or any language, really). I've noticed most people using acronyms these days are older, so maybe we just have to wait for them to die off?
BUT I'LL SOUND EVEN STUPIDER USING ABBREVS!
No.
Seriously, listen to the cool kids talking, are you jeal of that guy putting his p-corn in the m-wave? Totes? I promise you, abbrevs are MUCH cooler than acros. Anyone using acronyms today is clearly behind the times and deserves unending ridicule. Please just stop.
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Editor's note: some definitions of "acronym" include the abbrevs that I've mentioned. When I talk about "acronyms" I'm referring to the use of only letters and not chunks of words, just to resolve any ambiguity.
Also, I've been having some thoughts of using certain abbrevs in a literary context: let's say you're having an IM bro session with your friend but you want to be cooler. You would want to type something that sounds like "Check this bro sesh, no bigs, just the uzh." but that's confusing. We really want to say something like "Check this bro seʃ, no bigs, just the uʒ." It would be much easier if these phonetic symbols were easier to type so we could inject maximum awesomeness into more facets of our lives.
A bit of a necro, but I've been thinking about this and I absolutely agree with acronyms being pretty awful. It's bad enough when people use acronyms online that you have to look up, either on a Wiki or through some special glossary. It's even more horrid to use them in speech. If I have to take 5-10 seconds figuring out half the acronyms you're using, then the acronyms are not improving communication, but are instead hurting it.
If you use an acronym in a paper or something, please introduce it first. For example, "When considering DMA (Direct Memory Access) systems..."
