[thayne]

I agree that acronyms can be overused, especially in marketing.

However, a big part of why Tech, software, computer science, etc. have a lot of acronyms is because there are a lot of new, often abstract things to name, and acronyms are an easy and straightforward way to create a reasonably unique and short name for a new thing. And I don't think anyone would really want to write out all of "hypertext transfer protocol" instead of http. And imagine if every url looked like "hypertext-transfer-protocol://world-wide-web.example.commercial/index.hypertext-text-markup-language". And if it had been given some other name, say "hyperprot" would that be any more meaningful than http?

Re: acronyms in English vs spanish.

I wonder if this is related to how human communication has a constant rate of information transfer. From what I understand, spanish is spoken faster, (more syllables per second) but has less information per syllable. One way that english is able to convey more information with less syllables is the use of acronyms and other abbreviations. And this is especially true for professional jargon that you use a lot to speak with colleagues at your job.

> You don’t see Kant writing TCI instead of “The Categorical Imperative” or Rousseau writing TSC instead of “The Social Contract”. You usually see the creation of concepts (Biopolitics by Foucault, Zeitgeist by Herder, Orientalism by Said) or the use of nominalization.

I don't think any of those terms are much better than acronyms. Maybe the name gives you a vague idea of what they refer to, but like many acronyms they are labels for complex ideas that you can't really understand just by knowing what it is called. And these terms can be, and are used for "in-group signalling" in much the same way as acronyms.

Finally, tech is not at all unique in its abundant use of acronyms. I don't know about in other languages but at least in English, Math, Physics, and astronomy also make heavy use of acronyms (ODE, PDE, QED, LCD, AGN, LASER, QCD, SI, CGS, AU, BEC, etc.) And from what I've observed medical and sales professionals also use a lot of acronyms.

[OldOneEye]

Really small comment to what you wrote, but that's one of the things that make me love English over my own native language (Spanish): the way you can build and combine words to describe a complex idea, in a way that you would need a full sentence in other languages like French or Spanish.

Information density in the English language is higher than in romance languages, and that's great for work.

I vastly prefer to write documentation in English.

I, on the other hand, still prefer more indulgently verbose languages when it comes to lyricism and entertainment. There's a charm to it.

[Paul_Clayton]

For poetry, I think English has the advantage of Germanic and Latin roots. Such seems to offer some flexibility in tone.

The relative lack of conjugation and declension seems to hurt by constraining word order and reducing opportunities for sound similarity. Of course having rhymes be common also tends to reduce their impact.

Inflection (I think) is part of the cause of extra syllables, so has multiple impacts.

The length itself does seem to add something to the flow/lyricism, but I wonder if there is also a stronger sense of sound whereas English may be more a little more chaotic (not just having multiple roots but borrowing words more often).

[jorisw]

> acronyms are an easy and straightforward way to create a reasonably unique and short name for a new thing

Convenience for the writer at the expense of the reader.

Convenience is no excuse to be unclear.

These names given to a thing may last for decades. Starting out naming them ambiguously is lazy and irresponsible.

[Paul_Clayton]

One can look at abbreviations as being like pronouns with the antecedent sometimes being stored in a cultural context or being placed at first reference in a potentially longish text.

Like pronouns, the 'antecedent' may be unclear causing difficulty for the reader. However, pronouns and abbreviations can help communication and be convenient to the reader.

Acronyms have the advantage of being pronounceable and so treated more naturally as words.

Like jargon, when the context is a historical first reference rather than first reference within a text of moderate length, the meaning can be obscure to those not familiar with the context. (One of my college essays was faulted for using "inertia" in the physics sense, specifically that a body in motion tends to remain in motion which is contrary to the common use of inert/inactive/unmoving. It was a natural use to me, particularly for the image used, but it was wrong for the audience.)

Assuming familiarity is a common human flaw (xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501 ). As has been mentioned this can also be used for in-group/expertise signalling. Yet density in communication does have value. (Math would certainly be tedious if every proof started from axioms.)

I agree that being unclear is bad, especially for mere convenience. On the other hand being verbose can be tedious and even insulting (by implying a lack of familiarity with matters obvious to the reader).

I thought the main problem with initialisms was not ambiguity but unfamiliarity. Yes, there are many AMAs and sometimes the local context is insufficient to remove ambiguity (in which cases the initialism might be expanded for clarity or context clues added). However, my experience has been more often that intialisms had no meaning to me (beyond immediate context) -- a vocabulary issue -- than my being uncertain which meaning was intended (ambiguity).

Specialized terms like the "Social Contract" can use capitalization to indicate a jargon use and the plain sense of the words does give some clues to the intent, but such can also risk a false sense of comprehension. The writer would actually be depending on the reader's familiarity with the jargon use.

(I wish Page Table Cache had been adopted instead of Translation Lookaside Buffer even though tee el bee seems to flow more more easily from the tongue. Besides being more complete -- a TLB also caches permissions and other page table entry information and could cache page directory entries -- "cache" has a modern jargon sense closer to the typical design and "lookaside" typically does not apply to L2 TLBs.)

Communication is difficult and taking the time to choose the very best writing is rare. Even with care, migration of word meaning or connotation can make a choice worse than alternatives (and the migration can be across cultures and not just across time).

[I am not concise, but I still like initialisms.]

[jorisw]

Agree with most of what you're saying, except

> On the other hand being verbose can be tedious and even insulting (by implying a lack of familiarity with matters obvious to the reader)

Being overly clear (and perhaps verbose as a result) would only be perceived as insulting by an insecure fool. Clarity is objectively a good thing in comms.

Tedious? Sure. Very long expansions of initialisms written over and over perhaps. I have no problem with a term being expanded once before being abbreviated after.

[bryanrasmussen]

>I don't think any of those terms are much better than acronyms

The Social Contract is so much better, it is pithy and you can even sort of guess your way to what it means, it has resisted change over centuries, it far out performs an acronym.

The Categorical Imperative is abstract, badly descriptive and overly intellectual, much like most of Kant. The Categorical Imperative instead of something like Essential Moral Principle or anything that sort of pointed at what was meant is really a sort of acronym in words, you need to be an expert to know what it means.

This is why the Social Contract is a phrase used by common people in many languages, and the Categorical Imperative is used by Philosophers - generally only when discussing Kant specifically.

[jadengeller]

when naming the protocol part of a url, obviously you don't want to pick something so verbose, but that doesn't mean you gotta pick an acronym. could be hyper:// or smth. not saying it should be, just saying there are other ways that a more verbose concept can be shorted for certain contexts

[jorisw]

Exactly. If people HAVE to save space, an abbreviation is much clearer than an initialism.

[tomjakubowski]

Every day we stray further from gopher://