Subject:RE: T.W.A. - Those Wonderful Acronyms From:"Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sun, 01 Jan 2006 17:29:33 -0500
Wow...thanks for the list. I am going to bring it to work and add more to my
never ending list of acronyms. I had to laugh at the part of your email
about the same acronym for different names. It is not bad enough that we
have to look up the acronym, but then you have to determine which of the
sometimes fifteen things it stands for by how it is used in a sentence. I
often wonder if they have English courses at the Military academies for
acronyms. I can envision tests where there are sentences with an acronym and
a blank behind it where you fill it in with the correct name, as well as
multiple choice questions and which meaning of ABC best fits this sentence.
The whole thing is CAH...crazy as hell!
OWALIP...oh well at least it pays! :)
Melissa
From: "Cathy MacDonald" <camacdonald -at- core -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: T.W.A. - Those Wonderful Acronyms
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 13:11:49 -0600
I, too, work for a military contractor, and I'm so sick of trying to
remember those bazillion acronyms that my head is about to explode! Is it
so hard to say the words "Electronic Unit" instead of "EU"? If someone
refers to "AI," why should I have to run through the list of
possibilities...Artificial Intelligence? Air India? Amnesty
International?
Art Institute? Oh, of course: "ATTITUDE INDICATOR!" And, for crying out
loud, 99% percent of these so-called acronyms are really just initialisms.
Okay, I don't so much mind an "acronym" such as "HSI" (Horizontal Situation
Indicator) cuz it's a mouthful-and-a-half, but I now maintain 67
single-spaced pages of acronyms (many of which have the same acronym but
different names) just to know what my boss is talking about. And each
airline uses different names and acroynms, and even different names and
acronyms for each model of their own aircraft. For each acronym I finally
commit to memory, I have to forget my phone number, computer password, my
brother's name, and the street I live on.
When I ask The Boss questions about commercial or military aircraft, he
never responds with anything resembling names or common terminology; it's
much easier to just rattle off numbers: "Ya got yer 310s, yer FA-18, yer
F117s, yer JSF F-35s" ..blah, blah, blah. Thanks, Boss; that really
cleared
things up for me... Not. I think he's a major cog in the
Military-Industrial Numerical Acronym Conspiracy (MINAC).
Wait, I've got to add that acronym (and yes, it's a true acronym) to my
list!
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