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ventaYesterday, I got an email from my mother with the subject line "language". This was not, in fact, a rebuke for having used a rude word in my LJ last week, but a message of bogglement at a phrase she'd read.
The email says:
---
There are plans afoot to make a unified something or other of Stockton and
Middlesbrough. The glossy brochure speaks of "the vision of the spectrum of
cityness".
---
Now, besides noting that she thinks it really ought to be "citiness" she is requesting any form of translation or, indeed, indication of what on earth it means.
Anyone interested in further linguo-nonsense should read on.
There is, or at least I thought there was, a well-known phrase or saying "to do something off your own bat", meaning, approximately, to get on and do it yourself, acting on your own initiative. Years back, I was faintly confused by my first boyfriend, who habitually talked about doing things "off your own back". Back ? Bat, surely. Though, on reflection, back might have made more sense. Unless it was a cricketing term.
Yesterday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
secutatrix claimed to have done something on her own back.
So, I want to know which, if any, you'd use. Or any thoughts thereon.
[Poll #426565]
On the way home from work,onebyone and I were grumbling that Firefox doesn't do the Right and Proper Thing of displaying the alt text for a picture when you hover your mouse over the image. Further grumbling to wimble revealed why - there is now a title attribute which can be applied to images which should be displayed on hover-over, which Firefox correctly does (I just checked).
Wimble elaborated further that the title can be applied to all kinds of other elements, too - and mentioned one which I'd been very impressed to notice getting used over onhuskyteer's journal the other day.
Now, watch carefully.
Here is a sample sentence from my journal: "DERT will be held in Preston this year."
Do you know what DERT is ? Probably not. So, try this sentence instead:
"DERT will be held in Preston this year."
Hover your mouse over DERT in the second example sentence - and all is revealed. Isn't that clever ?
Bear with me, this is all building up to a further linguo-query. Being thorough-minded types, Wimble and I went looking in the HTML spec. The acronym element, which I used up there, comes under Phrase Elements. As does the abbr element:
---
ABBR:
Indicates an abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTTP, URI, Mass., etc.).
ACRONYM:
Indicates an acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.).
---
So, I wondered, what's the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym ? I'd have thought that WWW, HTTP etc were acronyms, not abbreviations. The only difference we could think of was that an acronym is required to be pronouncable (or at least pronounced).
Further on in the spec, however, it says:
---
The ABBR and ACRONYM elements allow authors to clearly indicate occurrences of abbreviations and acronyms. Western languages make extensive use of acronyms such as "GmbH", "NATO", and "F.B.I.", as well as abbreviations like "M.", "Inc.", "et al.", "etc.".
---
Er. Er. Does anyone pronounce FBI ? Fooby ? Even the Germans couldn't pronounce GmbH, surely ? (GmbH is an abbreviation of Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, and is an approximate equivalent of "ltd." after a company name, I think.) That looks far more to me like the split I expected, but it doesn't fit with the previous examples.
Later in the spec it says:
---
Note that abbreviations and acronyms often have idiosyncratic pronunciations. For example, while "IRS" and "BBC" are typically pronounced letter by letter, "NATO" and "UNESCO" are pronounced phonetically. Still other abbreviated forms (e.g., "URI" and "SQL") are spelled out by some people and pronounced as words by other people.
---
... so both abbreviations and acronyms can be pronounced. Which leaves me with the question not "what is the difference?" but "what on earth do W3C (the writers of the spec) think the difference is?"
And does anyone seriously pronounce URI ? Oori ? Yuri ?
The email says:
---
There are plans afoot to make a unified something or other of Stockton and
Middlesbrough. The glossy brochure speaks of "the vision of the spectrum of
cityness".
---
Now, besides noting that she thinks it really ought to be "citiness" she is requesting any form of translation or, indeed, indication of what on earth it means.
Anyone interested in further linguo-nonsense should read on.
There is, or at least I thought there was, a well-known phrase or saying "to do something off your own bat", meaning, approximately, to get on and do it yourself, acting on your own initiative. Years back, I was faintly confused by my first boyfriend, who habitually talked about doing things "off your own back". Back ? Bat, surely. Though, on reflection, back might have made more sense. Unless it was a cricketing term.
Yesterday,
secutatrix claimed to have done something on her own back.So, I want to know which, if any, you'd use. Or any thoughts thereon.
[Poll #426565]
On the way home from work,
onebyone and I were grumbling that Firefox doesn't do the Right and Proper Thing of displaying the alt text for a picture when you hover your mouse over the image. Further grumbling to wimble revealed why - there is now a title attribute which can be applied to images which should be displayed on hover-over, which Firefox correctly does (I just checked).Wimble elaborated further that the title can be applied to all kinds of other elements, too - and mentioned one which I'd been very impressed to notice getting used over on
huskyteer's journal the other day.Now, watch carefully.
Here is a sample sentence from my journal: "DERT will be held in Preston this year."
Do you know what DERT is ? Probably not. So, try this sentence instead:
"DERT will be held in Preston this year."
Hover your mouse over DERT in the second example sentence - and all is revealed. Isn't that clever ?
Bear with me, this is all building up to a further linguo-query. Being thorough-minded types, Wimble and I went looking in the HTML spec. The acronym element, which I used up there, comes under Phrase Elements. As does the abbr element:
---
ABBR:
Indicates an abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTTP, URI, Mass., etc.).
ACRONYM:
Indicates an acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.).
---
So, I wondered, what's the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym ? I'd have thought that WWW, HTTP etc were acronyms, not abbreviations. The only difference we could think of was that an acronym is required to be pronouncable (or at least pronounced).
Further on in the spec, however, it says:
---
The ABBR and ACRONYM elements allow authors to clearly indicate occurrences of abbreviations and acronyms. Western languages make extensive use of acronyms such as "GmbH", "NATO", and "F.B.I.", as well as abbreviations like "M.", "Inc.", "et al.", "etc.".
---
Er. Er. Does anyone pronounce FBI ? Fooby ? Even the Germans couldn't pronounce GmbH, surely ? (GmbH is an abbreviation of Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, and is an approximate equivalent of "ltd." after a company name, I think.) That looks far more to me like the split I expected, but it doesn't fit with the previous examples.
Later in the spec it says:
---
Note that abbreviations and acronyms often have idiosyncratic pronunciations. For example, while "IRS" and "BBC" are typically pronounced letter by letter, "NATO" and "UNESCO" are pronounced phonetically. Still other abbreviated forms (e.g., "URI" and "SQL") are spelled out by some people and pronounced as words by other people.
---
... so both abbreviations and acronyms can be pronounced. Which leaves me with the question not "what is the difference?" but "what on earth do W3C (the writers of the spec) think the difference is?"
And does anyone seriously pronounce URI ? Oori ? Yuri ?
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 12:56 pm (UTC)1) Dr - An abbreviation, but not an acronym.
2) WTF ? - An (acronym and an) abbreviation.
3) HTTP - An acronym (and an abbreviation).
So cases 1) and 2) I'd want to mark as abbreviations and case 3) as an acronym even though technically all acronyms are abbreviations.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:12 pm (UTC)That in the case of (2), the reader will need to mentally expand the phrase into its long form (well, unless they are familiar with it already), whereas with (3) you just use the thing as an atomic token which has a certain associated meaning which you will need to learn from scratch.
There are grey areas, of course. Something like FIFO, for example, is an atomic thingummy to me now, but when I first met it I would mentally expand it out and think about it for a bit (then get it wrong).
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:31 pm (UTC)> 3) HTTP - An acronym (and an abbreviation).
I disagree, because whether you mentally read these in full or as their letters (ie "What The Fuck" or "Double-you Tee Eff") neither case is a new word in its own right (see my post below). If case 2 was pronounced "wuttuff" then it would also be an acronym.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 03:16 pm (UTC)As always, see Wikipedia for more detail than you could possibly want !
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 02:15 pm (UTC)I'm not sure we all agree it has to be, though, that's just the definition you're using :)
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 02:38 pm (UTC)Hopefully we'll get this resolved - and I may well be incorrect. I'm certainly troubled by my conclusion that "shouldn't" is an acronym by my definition. In fact, www.dictionary.com seems to support the general premise that acronyms are "new" words, but discount the "shouldn't" case:
acronym: A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.
["shouldn't" being discounted because of the explicit requirement that initial letters form the new word.]
This definition of acronym seems to correspond to my understanding, but I'm not prepared to regard this website as the final authority!
[Is "WAC" a good example? I presume it is intended to be read as "whack" - but this isn't a known case to me, so I'd tend to read this as the three letters by default.]
And are we doing this one to death?!