Talk:Three letter acronym

Previous discussions regarding Three Letter Acronyms can also be found at:

• Talk:Three-letter acronym
• Talk:Three-letter abbreviation

There is also a talk page at:

• Talk:TLA (the disambiguation page)

PamD 12:16, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

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Why "Three letter acronym"?

Over the short history of Wikipedia, there has been lengthy discussion on many talk pages about which page should be "the main page". (In particular, see Talk:Three-letter acronym, and more recently, Talk:Three-letter abbreviation.) At some times, two or more very similar pages have existed describing the same thing.

This page is an attempt to have just one page describing TLAs, and all other pages redirecting to it. The difficulty is, what should "the main page" be called?

If we were to consider all variations of (T/t)hree( /-)(L/l)etter (A/a)(cronym/bbreviation), we would have 2^5 = 32 variations to choose from.

Clearly, some of these would never be candidates. (For example, it is unlikely that either "three Letter acronym" or "three letter Abbreviation" would be considered.) The point is: there are plenty of candidates to choose from.

The relevant policies and guidelines are Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations). Please note that names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors and for a general audience over specialists and that spelled-out phrases are preferable to abbreviations. Of course, the most common name is to be used so if the term is almost exclusively known only by its acronym it should be the article title.

However, TLA is ambiguous.

The vast majority of "readers from a general audience" use the term "Three letter acronym" (despite the fact that most TLAs are not pronounceable, and therefore not acronyms).

Hence "Three letter acronym" has been chosen as "the main page", even though many readers may consider it to be the "wrong" name for TLA.

(Although I had help, responsibility for this is taken by: Pdfpdf 11:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC))

What points where?

• TLA is "the" disambiguation page
  • Talk:TLA - exists
• tla - redirects to TLA
  • Talk:tla is a red link

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• TLA (disambiguation) - redirects to TLA
  • Talk:TLA (disambiguation) - exists
• WP:TLA - redirects to Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations
  • [[Talk:WP:TLA]] is a red link

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• Three letter abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym
  • Talk:Three letter abbreviation is a red link
• Three letter acronym is THE MAIN PAGE
  • Talk:Three letter acronym - Here (i.e. This page you're reading now)

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• Three-letter abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym
  • Talk:Three-letter abbreviation - exists
• Three-letter acronym - redirects to Three letter acronym
  • Talk:Three-letter acronym contains lengthy discussions

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• Three Letter Abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym
  • Talk:Three Letter Abbreviation is a red link
• Three Letter Acronym - redirects to Three letter acronym
  • Talk:Three Letter Acronym is a red link

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• Acronym and initialism
  • Talk:Acronym and initialism contains lengthy discussions
• Acronym - redirects to Acronym and initialism
  • Talk:Acronym contains very lengthy discussions
• Initialism - redirects to Acronym and initialism
  • Talk:Initialism contains some brief discussion

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• Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations
  • Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation and abbreviations contains lengthy discussions

Last updated: Pdfpdf 13:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

TLA

(By-the-way: Initially I "moved" TLA (disambiguation) to TLA. I wasn't completely comfortable with that, so I "moved" it back, and now TLA redirects to TLA (disambiguation).) Cheers, Pdfpdf 12:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Hallo, I think it's a pity not to have the disambig page just titled "TLA" - you say you moved it there and weren't happy with that. We've now got the situation where typing in "TLA" gets you to the disambig page (good) ... but only via a redirect, which is clumsy. If you look at the "What links here" for Three letter acronym, the vast majority of links are from "ABC" rather than from "ABC (disambiguation)". Apart from that everything seems to hang together, thanks, though I'm not sure I've looked at every reasonable variant! PamD 14:58, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I was quite "happy" with it, but not "comfortable" because quite a bit of the Wikipedia "infrastructure" seems to be geared for "TLA (disambiguation)", and I didn't want to "break" things. It didn't seem to make much sense having both pages identical. It didn't seem to make much sense having "the infrastructure" pointing to a "TLA (disambiguation)" page which was a "redirect" page (to "TLA"). So, reluctanly, I changed it to how it is now. (I, too, would prefer that "TLA" was the disambiguation page.) I am hoping you can think of a better solution, because (unfortunately) I can't. Pdfpdf 10:23, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I've now done what's necessary to get it moved, subject to an admin agreeing to it - I followed the procedure at WP:RM including leaving a note at Talk:TLA (disambiguation). Cheers. PamD 12:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Well yes, but ... What about the WP "infrastructure" being geared up for "TLA (disambiguation)"? A "move" won't handle that. i.e. "TLA" will not match searches for "TLA (disambiguation)", which is what caused me to make the change in the first place. Pdfpdf 12:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

TLA is now "the" disambiguation page.
"Game, set and match. Thank you ball boys. Thank you linesmen". Pdfpdf 13:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Meaning of "acronym"

"to be an acronym, an abbreviation must be able to be pronounced as a word rather than as the names of letters."

Surely this is not true - and by "surely", I mean that the OED (an acronym) has only one mention of anything like this rule, which appears only in an old quotation. As to the footnote that this sentence points to, it merely contains an example, and no evidence towards confirming the controversial claim about the meaning of "acronym".172.201.101.207 12:37, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This topic has been debated at great length previously on the various "talk" pages listed above in the "What points where" section. (So I guess you're right saying it's controversial, but I think you may not be in the case of the use of the word "surely".)

As to the footnote ... - You are quite correct. I shall look for, and add, some "evidence".

Questions:

• Have you looked at any of the talk pages?
• Have you read acronym?
• Have you read http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acronym?
• What does the OED say is the definition of acronym?

Cheers, Pdfpdf 12:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

My Concise Oxford Dictionary (Fifth edition reprinted 1966) says "Word formed from initial letters of other words (e.g. Anzac, Nato, radar)". The operative thing being "Word" - words are pronouncable.

My Little Oxford Dictionary (Third edition reprinted 1964) doesn't contain it.

My Little Oxford Dictionary (Fifth edition reprinted 1982) says "Word made from the initial letters of other words". Again - "Word"

Strangely, "acronym" doesn't appear in my Shorter OED (Third edition reprinted 1974)

I don't have a copy of the OED at home. Pdfpdf 14:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci211518,00.html (Whatis.com) "An acronym is an abbreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation itself forms a word. According to Webster's, the word doesn't have to already exist; it can be a new word. Webster's cites "snafu" and "radar", two terms of World War Two vintage, as examples. Implicit is the idea that the new word has to be pronounceable and ideally easy to remember." Similar at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/acronym Pdfpdf 14:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Full OED defintion is "A word formed from the initial letters of other words", so NATO is one, BBC isn't. But, as has been discussed at length, "Three letter acronym" is commonly and loosely used for any set of three letters used as an abbreviation.

Incidentally if you are in the UK you can probably access the glories of OED online through your local public library system, from any networked PC - check [1] to see if your local library service offers this, and if it does so you only need the number from your library ticket at [2]. It's wonderful! PamD 14:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, pdf, forgot you're "Down under". But the abovementioned page says that some library systems elsewhere also subscribe, "ask your librarian". Good luck, it's a glorious toy to have with online access. PamD 14:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I bet it is! You're just trying to make me feel like a colonial, aren't you ... ;-) Pdfpdf 16:38, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

As the Concise Oxford says "Word formed from initial letters of other words (e.g. Anzac, Nato, radar)", I'm surprised the OED only says "A word formed from the initial letters of other words" Pdfpdf 16:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

So what's the point and the conclusion?
Surely this is not true - No, it is not "sure".
And there's plenty of evidence to suggest it may be true.
However, as PamD says: But, as has been discussed at length, "Three letter acronym" is commonly and loosely used for any set of three letters used as an abbreviation.

OK. I'll review the wording, think about it, and make the wording more "inclusive". However, not right now. Right now, I'm going to bed. Pdfpdf 16:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Cut & paste moves and history merging

The content of this page has been through two separate cut-and-paste moves. I suggest that a history merge be done to fix this. The cut-and-paste moves were:

• From Three-letter acronym to Three-letter abbreviation by Agateller on 15 June 2007.
• From Three-letter abbreviation to Three letter acronym by Pdfpdf on 19 September 2007.

In addition, two major deletions of content occurred earlier than the cut-and-paste moves:

• A "Terminology" section was removed by an anonymous editor on 15 November 2006 and replaced with "why is this not read only ?". That sentence was later removed but the section was never restored.
• "Bold major deletion" by Rgathercoal on 26 January 2007. This included information about the origins of the term which contradicts the claim in the present article that "The first known use of the term" was "circa 1984".

If there are no objections in the next few days I am going to list this on WP:SPLICE to fix the cut-and-past moves with a history merge, and I will restore some of the content that was deleted. DHowell 01:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Fine by me: I wasn't happy with the last lot of cutting and pasting, rather than real "MOVE"ing, but someone else thought it was simpler that way! My input above was an attempt to create order out of confusion. PamD 14:04, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes it was my fault; it seemed like a good idea at the time (for several reasons not worth resurrecting now), and a MOVE wouldn't have solved this problem. But as usual, I digress ...

Fine by me Pdfpdf 11:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

I see POV in this article:

• in favor of computing, against agency
• in favor of the term "acronym", which I think is regional.

I'm not sticking an NPOV tag on it right now, but rather a less drastic globalize. --Treekids (talk) 22:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarification please?

Before I respond, could you clarify a few things for me please?

What do you mean by the article is "against agency"? (I'm afraid I don't understand.)

What do you mean by in favor of the term "acronym"?

Do you mean there's some other term than "acronym" that should be used?

And in what way is it "in favor" of it?

Again, sorry, I'm afraid I don't understand.

And finally, what leads you to say "acronym", which I think is regional?

i.e. Why do you think it is regional, and which region do you think it is "regional" to?

Looking forward to your answers. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 10:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I got a response directing me to Why "Three letter acronym"? below. I guess I was unclear. I was referring to the lead paragraph, not the name of the article. --Treekids (talk) 18:06, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to have done such a good job of misleading you ;-) (I don't know why WP took you to Why "Three letter acronym"?; the link I left you pointed to NPOV.)

Let's start again. But first, please post new stuff at the bottom of the talk page, not the top.

You may now notice that I left you a pile of questions. To that I will add the question: "Which paragraph do you mean by the lead paragraph?"

(You can't mean: A three letter acronym (commonly referred to as a TLA) is an abbreviation, an alphabetism, an initialism or an acronym consisting of three letters.)

(And I don't think you're referring to: Many of the abbreviations described as "three letter acronyms" are initialisms, which some definitions of acronym do not include (See acronym and initialism). Nevertheless, "Three letter acronym" is commonly used for any set of three letters used as an abbreviation.)

Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Upon rereading, I guess I'm not spitting out into words the impression I'm getting. And I made a mistake in writing above- it's not the lead paragraph as much as the ones right after the lead. More specifically, I guess, what hits me is...

"History and origins" says "TLA is particularly associated with computing." and "Other information" says 'Another use of TLA is "three-letter agency", referring to a law enforcement or intelligence agency with a three-letter name abbreviation', which sounds dismissive. In my own experience, TLAs are used for lots of organizations and concepts and are not at all biology or computing or even agency-specific (tho "three letter agency" is an amusing alternative TLA from the proper one).

I think Three Letter Alphabetism is just as good an acryonym(sic) as Three Letter Acronym and wonder if the preference for the latter is a regionalism (American?).

I guess maybe a more constructive way to deal with it would have been to spit a few fact or cn tags around so that the original research eventually gets replaced with cited facts.

Thanks all for putting up with my slow path to coherence ;-)

--Treekids (talk) 21:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Other "impressions"

Hallo Treekids. Speaking from the UK I don't find anything non-global about this article! I think the computing bias may be because, although people have been using 3-letter abbreviations in other areas such as medicine for a long time, they proliferated so much around engineering and IT that they started to get a name, and a self-referential abbreviation of TLA. The things themselves are widespread, but the abbreviation TLA for them was first used around engineering/IT.

The 3-letter agency thing seems to be a US speciality (they're the ones who have them), but I think that's OK in the "Other info" section where it is. I tend to think of this article as an interesting, slightly light-weight, component of WP and not worth getting too stressed about - there are much bigger problems elsewhere in WP!

I wasn't sure that "alphabetism" was a word (Firefox spellcheck doesn't think it is!), but see below. If you Google "three letter acronym" and "three letter abbreviation" and "three letter alphabetism" you get 103,000, 49,600 and zero hits respectively. "Alphabetism" on its own gets 10,600 hits, including the Wiktionary entry which has 4 diverse meanings starting with An initialism: an abbreviation which is read letter-by-letter, such as "U.N.". That's fascinating, as it's in a way the opposite of the tight definition of an acronym! And it was intriguing to see the other 3 meanings.

Be that as may, I hope we don't need to get into edit wars about this article. I'm inclined to remove your "global" tag as inappropriate, as I see no particular bias. PamD (talk) 22:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Treekids. Thanks for the clarifications. I think Pam has provided responses pretty similar to what mine would have been. (Thanks Pam.)

I'm Australian, and from a statistics and IT background; TLA and acronym are "natural" in my environment.

(Note, however, that there's been a pretty strong American cultural influence on Australian language use since Australian TV stations found it was cheaper to buy American TV shows than to make Australian TV shows.)

Also, I'd never heard the terms "initialism" or "alphabetism" before I came across this article.

Similarly, I had not previously seen a definition of "acronym" that said acronyms had to be pronounceable.

So, addressing your initial comments, I don't notice any POV, don't notice any regional bias, and hence I have the opionion that there isn't any.

However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any - just that I don't notice it.

Also, Pam is British, and she doesn't notice any.

Now, being a part-time statistician, I'd be the first to suggest it's unwise to make conclusions from a sample of size two. Never-the-less, I'd like to see some more counter-evidence before I changed my opinion.

I hope that helps. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the global perspective. I'm still concerned about the dismissive tone I see in the structuring of the first couple of section. Treekids (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(later) I addressed the items I thought were dismissive by streamlining the intro and moved the various types of TLA as examples right up front so none were relegated to "Other Information". What do you think? Treekids (talk) 17:38, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Edit conflict

Treekids: Whilst I was thinking about your changes, you started a new batch of changes, and hence I got an edit conflict.
I've put my changed version (of the front of the article) at User talk:Pdfpdf/TLA.
I'll have a look at your latest batch of changes later (when you've finished your current editing). Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
P.S. Look at the raw text, not just the displayed finished product. Pdfpdf (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Back to the main topic

Hallo again, Treekids and Pdfpdf: I haven't got a lot of time today - lots of real life things to do - but a few comments:

• The article isn't intended to be about three letter acronyms as such, in the wild as it were, but about the concept of the "Three Letter Acronym" being recognised and talked about. I had already thought of the usefulness of linking to Category:Lists of TLAs before I saw it in pdf's version - I think we need to do this.
• There's a piece of wording we've always had in the article which is plain wrong! It says "A three letter acronym (commonly referred to as a TLA) is an abbreviation, an alphabetism, an initialism or an acronym consisting of three letters.". Not so! That definition would include "etc" or WP's own "dab" for disambiguation! Perhaps it should say "A three letter acronym (commonly referred to as a TLA) is an abbreviation consisting of three letters which are initials of words of the term abbreviated, and always written in upper case letters." There's an interesting point whether it can also include two letters plus a digit - as in the category listing! I don't think so, myself.
• I really don't think we need to give a lot of examples, though I can see that Treekids has put a lot work into providing them, thanks. As I say, the article isn't about the existence of them but the recognition of them as a phenomenon.

No time - got to get on with a weekend's full of stuff. Good luck with it all. PamD (talk) 10:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Treekids, I too have life and work getting in the way of WP - I'll be out-of-town for the next few days. I'll leave you in Pam's more-than-capable hands. I did have in mind to make some changes along the line that you've seen in User talk:Pdfpdf/TLA. However, I need to digest what Pam's said before I embark on them. "See" you later in the week. Pdfpdf (talk) 11:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Back again

I've done a bit of tidying up of the article, which I hope will meet with approval! PamD (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)