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The Cult of Abbreviation Tommcarthur The Cult of Abbreviation TOMMcARTHUR If lexical abbreviation is no more than a fringe to vocabulary proper, it is a most diverse and dynamic fringe IN SEPTEMBER 1986, the American refer- The nature of abbreviation ence publishers Gale Research Company sent out a press release that began: What is the The following is an extract from Time fastest growing language in the world? The magazine (7 July 86): 'Last December CGE answer then provided was: 'abbrevomania' or seemed to have concluded a joint venture 'initialese'. •with AT&T and its Dutch partner Philips. In The purpose of the press release was to that deal, AT&T-Philips would have taken promote the second edition of the Inter- over 16% of France's telephone network in return for helping a CGE subsidiary, Alcatel, national Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbrevi- ations Dictionary, the short form of whose title market telephone equipment in the US.' is the I Al AD. This epic has 911 pages, claims At least five factors are relevant to the over 110,000 entries, costs $160.00, and is discussion of this or any similar extract: edited by Julie E. Towell and Helen 1. Short forms like 'US', 'AT&T', 'CGE' E.Sheppard. It also has a companion epic, the and 'Alcatel' range, in terms of our under- Reverse I Al AD, which orders the entries by standing, from the transparent to the opaque. the full forms of the abbreviations, and costs Most people know some abbreviations well $175.00. These American products dwarf a British equivalent, the Everyman Dictionary of Ab- TOM McARTHUR was born in Glasgow in 1938. breviations (or EDOB), whose second edition A graduate of both Glasgow and Edinburgh also appeared in 1986. This work is published universities, he has been in turn an officer-instructor in by Dent, edited by John Paxton, costs the British Army, a school-teacher in the Midlands of £10.95, has 389 pages, and contains over England, Head of English at the Cathedral School, 25,000 entries; that is, it has fewer than a Bombay, organizer of courses for overseas students at quarter of the items covered by Gale's the University of Edinburgh, and associate professor I Al AD. If there were no demand for such of English at the Universitedu Quebec. He has zvrittenfor The Birmingham Mail, The Times of works of reference, publishers and compilers India, and The Scotsman. His publications include would not engage in the awful toil of the 'Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English,' producing them. There is a demand, how- 'A Foundation Course for Language Teachers,' ever, and as a result they stand as a testimony 'The Written Word', the co-editing o/'Languages to the success and significance of abbreviation of Scotland', and 'Worlds of Reference'. He is in English. married with three children. 36 ENGLISH TODAY 15 July 1988 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 04:51:16, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400003515 (like 'US')S know others in a hazier fashion of groups may feel that it is a token of non- (perhaps like 'AT&T'), and are ignorant of membership or of less than proper com- many more (such as 'GCE' and 'Alcatel')- petence not to know both the short and full Here, Time expands 'CGE' to 'Compagnie forms used in their group. They may also feel Generate d'Electricite', but provides no gloss a certain pride in their easy acquaintance with for 'Alcatel', although it is presumably like such expressions, and risk using them in the 'Amoco' or 'Ameritech'. wrong company. This can result in accu- 2. Of those abbreviations that we know, sations of jargon-mongering. There are few some are pan of general life, like 'US', and things as opaque (or irritating) as an some are part of life within certain larger or abbreviation one has never met before. smaller groups, in this instance the French 5. Abbreviations can be polysemic. Thus, communications industry. the letters AA stand for both 'Alcoholics 3. People can, however, use short forms Anonymous' and (in Britain) 'Automobile whether or not they are familiar with their Association'. The contraction con can mean full versions. For example, literate people are 'convict', 'confidence trick', 'concentration', familiar with 'e.g.' and 'q.v.'; they under- 'concerning', 'consol', 'consul' - and 'contra- stand them, whether or not they know the diction' itself. Latin phrases they represent. In the same These points cover the generalities of way, anybody can talk about ICI or Texaco present-day abbreviations. To appreciate without reflecting on what the names stand them better, however, we need some history for. The more familiar the short form, the and classification. less need there may be to invoke the full form, and indeed the full form may be forgotten. The words 'radar' and 'mob' are A typology of abbreviations potent illustrations of how this happens. Abbreviation may be as old as language, 4. Those who know and use certain especially in baby talk and the creation of pet abbreviations may or may not feel the need to names. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs func- explain them to others. In addition, members tioned in both their full forms and 'acro- The variable reference of everyday abbreviations: IRA to most Britons is only the Irish Republican Army, but Money to most Americans is primarily an individual retirement account. Glory Days for IR As est wayj to deploy your previous contributions. This special report win help. If you're jusi getting around to opening an IRA for the 1985 tax yea/. shan* on you. You've already lost al toast 14 month* of ux- deferred compounding. So what, you say? Con- sider this sobering scenario: early birds who on Jan. I at each year contribute S2A00 tout IRA earning 10% will amass £42,000 more in tax- defened appreciation over 30 yean than pro- crasiinators who make the same investment but delay their contribution* until the last permiai- trie moment—the IM-filing deadline of April IJ in the following year. Don't despair too much, [hough. You've got plenty of company. Some 8O% of all IRA contributions for the 1984 tax year were made in the first 3S* months of 1985. Also, a sound investment choice now can help you make up for kwi lime. /n making such, a selection, whether for a 1985 or a 1986 IRA, you!) have tocontend thb year with a significantly altered economic envi- ronment. Key trail*: a booming slock market and the lowest interest rates seen sine* tRAi be- came universally available. And if (he ui re- form bid currently wending its way through Congress passes, yooTJ have to deal with some changes in the rides governing IRAs. Chief among them are slifler penalties for early wtih- •h— l5«.no«[hecorTcniin« •' • THE CULT OF ABBREVIATION 37 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 25 Sep 2021 at 04:51:16, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078400003515 phonically'; in the latter case, signs were formerly, using points was the norm. In the interpreted in terms only of the opening preface to the second EDOB, Paxton notes sounds of the words they stood for, and were that 'the modern practice of omitting from used in cartouches to represent people's abbreviations the full point (period) con- names. In doing this, they functioned as tinues to grow, and it is particularly true in proto-letters, before alphabets became com- military and data processing terms. The mon. Among the ancient Romans, the letters unpointed style, too, may be used for 'S.P.Q.R.' stood for Senatus Populusque advertising or for bold headings while the Romanus ('the Senate and the Roman pointed is kept for more formal use although people'), and clipped words like 'IMP CAES' increasingly officials are extremely doubtful for Imperator Caesar ('Emperor Caesar') were about what is the exact style of abbreviations common on inscriptions and coins. to be used by their organizations'. Present-day conventions of abbreviation, Idiosyncratic usage abounds. For example, however, have their origins in medieval people may or may not place points after each European scribal and scholastic practices. In of the initials of their names. The Inter- the Middle Ages, contractions were valued national Herald Tribune, for example, prints both for mnemonic purposes and because 'U.S.' for the United States alongside 'EC for parchment was expensive and copying labori- the European Community. There are even ous. As writing extended from Latin into the exceptions to the implicit convention that vernacular languages, abbreviation extended upper case is for language realia (such as with it, first of all as Latinisms (such as 'e.g.' 'BBC') and lower case for stylistic and other for exempli gratia), then as native contrac- devices (as with 'e.g.'). The Initial Teaching tions. From the 15th century onward, Alphabet (or initial teaching alphabet), for printers turned many scribal usages into example, reduces to 'i.t.a.', and the common typographic conventions, leaving others for short form of son of a bitch' is 's.o.b'. use in note-taking and record-keeping. It is also curious that a letter sequence The core purpose of all abbreviated usage, which is not an initialism can be interpreted ancient or modern, alphabetic or otherwise, is as one. Thus, the letters SOS were adopted as to combine economy of effort with repetition an international distress signal solely because of the familiar.
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