NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/usage/english/8730

Text File | 1992-11-21 | 8.0 KB | 181 lines

Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!princeton!crux!roger
From: [e-mail] (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Apostrophes in Plural forms?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 04:49:12 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Charles Geyer) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>(Roger Lustig) writes (replying to me):

>> But [scientists] were perverse souls who decided to obfuscate just for the
>> hell of it, right?   I think not.  Instead, things may have gotten a little
>> more complicated on the scientific front, and the expressions used to
>> describe complicated things and process just got too long.

>That is demonstrably not true.  It is purely a matter of modern style.
>In medicine, for example, many diseases that had names are being renamed
>alphabet soup style, e. g. erythroblastosis fetalis to hemolytic disease
>of the newborn (HDN).

Good for them.  Using more English in medical terminology is a good
idea, don't you think?  One shouldn't have to know Latin to know
what one's doctor is saying.  As for the initialism, well, it saves
time, and doctors like to do that.  Also, given their handwriting, I'd
rather take my chances with three caps...

>Is a PCV valve (to use one of your own examples) more complicated than a
>carburator or a butterfly valve?  No, but since it's new it gets a TLA.

It certainly has a longer name when it's not abbreviated.

>> Do you really want to write out "maximum likelihood" or "best linear unbiased
>> estimator" or "Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test" every time?  Nor do you, I bet.

>You bet wrong.  I explicitly said the exact opposite.  The trouble with you,
>Roger, is that you don't pay any attention to what you read before you start
>flaming.

No, the problem was that I didn't believe you.

>Even "maximum likelihood", which I use many times a paper, I spell out each
>time.  The language flows better, and I have never had an editor or referee
>suggest compressing it with more initialisms.

Well, good for you.  But don't confuse your taste with some higher
standard.  You're welcome to write any way you wish, and I'm glad you
pay attention to your style, but I'm not convinced that there's
anything imperative about your way.

>> Try writing a 20-graf newspaper article on such a topic using van Leunen's
>> advice.  Then repeat the exercise with a technical report.

>I've never been a newspaper writer and don't ever expect to be one.  I've

Well, van Leunen's example was intended to be journalistic.  I find
problems with that approach.

>done it with technical reports and scientific papers many times.

>> Didn't the people who introduced the acronyms and initialisms do so to
>> make their lives (and those of the folks around them) simpler?  If this
>> hadn't succeeded, would they have continued?

>Roger, you have this amazingly panglossian view of the world.  Anything
>people say, it is because that is the best of all possible ways to say it.

*sigh* I get accused of this all the time; I think it's so much easier
than reading what I say.

>It never seems to enter your mind that people frequently continue to do
>things out of sheer trendiness long after they have become totally
>counterproductive.

No, most people *don't* do things out of sheer trendiness.  They may do
them out of habit -- but language is by its nature a habitual activity.
As for the total counterproductiveness, I haven't heard of too many
acronym-caused accidents.  Have you?

>> "Disease" -- there it is.  When you don't like a phenomenon, don't
>> tell us why it's bad, just insult it and those associated with it.
>> VAX, PCV valve, MRI scan, the GOP, CBS, the USS Iowa -- you must use
>> a hundred initialisms and acronyms in a day.

>I doubt I use ten.  Half of those I use disparagingly.

You're welcome to your attitude as well as to your style.  It's the
critique of everybody else's style that makes me wonder--"counterproductive,"
"sheer trendiness," etc.

>Why does a computer or a computer company have to be named with a TLA?
>Did people not buy Stutz Bearcats or Ford Fairlanes or Rolls-Royce Silver
>Clouds before initial mania struck?

Not to mention the Model T.  The clumsy name didn't hurt sales any,
as I recall.

>People even buy Apple Macintoshs,
>but I guess they don't count, not being real computers.

No, they're a direct appeal to people who associate initialisms with
arcane technical matters.  (Not that IBM wasn't called IBM when the
Stutz was still being built...come to think of it, I bet the stock
ticker had a good deal to do with corporate initials...)

>PCV valve I knocked above.

But does your *engine* knock?

>MRI scan.  Wonderful.  It used to be NMR scan, but that's now politically
>incorrect.  It just goes to show that these things don't always save
>time.  The N buried in NMR stood for "nuclear" which was held to scare
>patients, hence MRI.  Can you explain why a word for this couldn't
>be invented as would have happened if this had been invented 30 years
>ago?

NMR was invented well over 30 years ago; my father completed his dissertation
on the subject in 1957.  It was called NMR then too.  I'm not sure what
your point is about changing NMR to MRI--initialism either way--but what
word do you suggest?

(Actually, MRI is quite a bit more accurate!  The N doesn't mean much, as
NMR is the only kind of magnetic resonance technique used in most places;
and the I for Imaging indicates a new technology of the 80's.  Actually,
given the wave of scanning technology--CAT, PET, MRI--some short, easily
identifiable names, acronymic or not, were needed to keep confusion down.)

Come to think of it, modern statistics has been blessed with one of the
great coiners of words: John Tukey.  From bit through froot, flog,
biweight, and jackknife, he's come up with a good deal of non-acronymic
jargon.  Of course, if you're not an insider and want to remember which is the
bootstrap and which the jackknife, the words themselves will be of little
use--whereas an acronym (froot and bit are contractions, a whole different
subject, though they include initials, too) will help out some if you
can identify even one of its component letters.

>As for the others, if the only initialisms in use were as old as GOP and
>USS, there wouldn't be any problem.

They will be.  Or is age a criterion of acceptability?  Actually, there
were quite a few in the past; we just don't use them anymore.  Like P.O.G,
as in "How Dry I Am."

>As I said, it's the bewildering
>number of them that's the problem.  No one of them is evil in itself.

Well, nobody uses all of them, and almost any editor will insist on
unraveling them on their first use.

>> Well, speaking the language of your audience is always a good idea.
>> But why don't you find metonymic terms for the Central Limit Theorem,
>> the way van Leunen suggests?

>That's your characterization of what van Leunen suggests.  It's not
>what she said.

It's what she *did*, and she was unacceptably vague in doing so.  As
soon as her example gets extended, and has to mention what actual
producers or wholesalers are doing, especially if there are some who
disagree with their representative bodies, one has to go back and
find some other solution.

>I already said how I avoid spelling out "central limit
>theorem" in each place a devotee of initialisms would use "CLT".  It's
>not difficult.  It comes to mind immediately as soon as one stops trying
>to maximize initialisms and starts trying to minimize them.

Oh, come off it.  Nobody "tries to maximize initialisms."  This is
silly--imputing some preposterous intent to people whose style you
don't like.

Roger