RE: Acronyms

["Newman, Sarah" <snewman -at- bechtel -dot- com>]

	>I get very annoyed with the over-use of acronyms in IT (go hard
with the
	>puns, Bevan!), particularly so when the same acronym is used for
more than
	>one meaning. E.g. ASP means either Application Service Provider or
Active
	>Server Page.

Bevan,

IT is particularly bad about acronyms, but so are other fields, particularly
engineering. Here, between the company-specific, engineering, and IT
acronyms, it's a real alphabet soup. My personal favorite, from a recent
staff meeting:  "K.C. is the new CIO of the P&C GBU."  I.e., K.C. (a person)
is the new Chief Information Officer of the Petroleum and Chemical Global
Business Unit. Our partial solution is to 

*	maintain our own acronym glossary as part of our style guide that
includes the acronyms we encounter at our company 
*	define all acronyms on first use and as popups in the online help
*	use online sources such as whatis.com to find the IT acronyms or
acronymfinder.com for more general ones

Regards,

Sarah Newman
BECHTEL
Information Systems and Technology
(713) 235-3352
(281) 240-9111


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