CHAPTER 59

Acronyms

One of the many marvels of the English language is the way in which it borrows words from any and

every source and, if a word is not readily available, we manufacture a new one by compounding or
contraction. Or we just make up a new word.
Acronyms are a special group of manufactured words that go through a process of assimilation that is
often quite rapid, though sometimes they are never fully assimilated. The radar set did not even exist
before 1940, yet today radar is almost a household word. The word is made up from the initial letters of
Radio Detection And Receiving. During World War II, servicemen quickly called it RADAR, and it even
more speedily lost its uppercase spelling and became radar. Ten years later, the Self-Contained
Underwater Breathing Apparatus was invented, and, almost overnight, we had the highly popular scuba
outfit. These are just two of the better known acronyms. The advent of the personal computer has
produced a steady stream of new and exotic words, many of which started life as acronyms and rapidly
became regular words.
The creation and assimilation of acronyms has created its own set of spelling rules.
Spelling rule: Brand new acronyms consist of capital letters with periods between each letter.
Intermediate stage acronyms are still in capital letters, but they have lost the periods. Mature
acronyms have split into two groups:
(1) Names or proper nouns, spelled in capital letters with no periods:

(^) (2) Regular words with neither capitals nor periods:
(^) Note that not all abbreviations become acronyms. For example, the UN, MI5, the FBI, and IRA are
always pronounced as separate letters.