I read with some amusement the letter from John Neumeyer regarding the use of acronyms in the literature without identifying their meaning (C&EN, March 30, page 2). I used to believe that any ...

We’ve been a little self-indulgent and playful during the holiday season, but readers are calling us back to business. Here’s one: For many years I have had anxiety about the plurals of acronyms and ...

Acronyms are stronger. Abbreviations are wimpy abbreviated versions of the real thing. Acronyms can take on lives of their own. Consider AARP. It used to mean “American Association of Retired Persons.

Sometimes we have a lot to say, but little time to say it. That’s where acronyms come in and help speed things up. What exactly is an acronym? It’s a word comprised of the first initials of the other ...

The initialism ‘FB’ used on social media has been declared the most confusing of all time, with 364,274 monthly searches in the UK. Overall, the five most confusing social media slang terms are FB ...

Initially, I didn't think I could say a lot about acronyms. I was wrong. An acronym uses the first letters of a few words to form a new word. The purpose is to shorten a long string of words to one ...

If an abbreviation formed from the first letters of several words is pronounced as one word, it's an acronym. Gif, laser and snafu are examples. If such an abbreviation is known by its letters, it's ...

Returning to the United States seven years ago, I was puzzled how the Bureau of Land Management had seemingly become involved with race politics. Then I deciphered that the hashtag #BLM had taken on a ...

The use of the abbreviation OMG, which was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dates back to 1917, when it was used in a personal letter. And LOL had a previous life, as principal ...

From the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Elon Musk is on the warpath to devour the alphabet soup of the federal ...