QT 15 – Video Transcript and Bonus Info
Welcome to 2-Minute Tuesday and a QuickTake quiz with Cate. Ready? How many of the following ten abbreviations are acronyms?
- FBI
- SWAT
- YMCA
- DVD
- MRI
- USDA
- MADD
- CNN
- EKG
- NASA
Two? Five? All? None?
What is an acronym anyway? An acronym is a word we create from the letters of other words. Unlike other shortened forms, an acronym is pronounced as a word. Of the ten abbreviations listed, only three are acronyms:
SWAT MADD NASA
The other abbreviations are called initialisms because we say each initial separately.
Some acronyms have become common nouns, words like scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), modem (modulator/demodulator), pixel (picture element), and canola (oil) (Canada oil low acid).
Pretty cool, huh?
In some cases, the abbreviation comes first, with the meaning following to support the word. This type of abbreviation is called a backronym because it is created backward. For example,
USA Patriot Act = Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act
and the word acronym itself = A Contrived Result of Nomenclature Yielding Mechanism
Now to a tricky question: is the title of this episode—QTQ—an initialism or an abbreviation? An initialism is an abbreviation that requires us to say each letter separately: Q-T-Q. But wait, isn’t that a word: Cutie-Queue? I wonder what an abbreviation is called that is both an initialism and an acronym?
Whatever it is, stay tuned for Part 2 of QTQ on our next 2-Minute Tuesday…and another quiz!
The rest of the story:
An acronym is not an initialism, and an initialism is not an acronym, but both are abbreviations. So when including a list of short forms in a report, title the page “Abbreviations,” not “Acronyms.”
When you use an acronym, don’t follow it with a word that is part of the acronym. PIN is an acronym for personal identification number, so write PIN, not PIN number. ATM is an acronym for automated teller machine, so write ATM, not ATM machine.
Now we need to add a new paragraph on the term COVID-19. This abbreviation forms a word from the letters and number of the phrase coronavirus disease 2019. It is an acronym.