Hi Kat, you've actually got your definitions in the wrong order. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAG. It can be pronounced as 'wag' OR 'W.A.G', depending on your fancy.
An abbreviation is just that, the abreviation of a common word for the purpose of brevity where the meaning is still implicit. Though I would dispute implicitness with many examples, particularly US states. ;) Either way, although an acronym is a class of abbreviation, an abbreviation is never a class of acronym. HTH -- Paul A Noone Webmaster, ASHM [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kat Sent: Wednesday, 14 December 2005 10:57 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Abbreviations and Acronyms Gday, I was writing in my blog and was using acronyms and abbreviations and I realised I didn't know something about the right way of doing things, and I'm fairly confident someone here would. This may be off topic because it's a question of accessible and/or semantics. It may be also a little bit persnickety. I understand the difference between acronym and abbreviation, in that an acronym is pronounced as a word, is treated as a word, while an abbreviation is pronounced as a succession of letters. While I was writing, I definately used an abbreviation, created from the first letter of the phrase, eg, HTML. In this case it was one of my uni subjects, ISMR (Information Systems Maintenance and Re-engineering.) But in the next paragraph, I used the same convention of taking the first letter of each word in the phrase to create AIM (Accessible Interactive Multimedia). The Question: Since it can be an acronym, should I mark it up as an acronym, or should I stick to the convention I used earlier in the page to refer to other subjects and use abbreviation? It can be pronounced as the word 'aim' or as each individual letters. What makes more sense from the accessibility point of view? What makes more sense from the semantic point of view? Or is this just a personal choice and has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the end result? Am I over analysing this to death? Kat I have this feeling there's an important point I'm missing somewhere. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ****************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
