What’s an Acronym?
I used to work as a civilian technical writer and programmer on a military base. One application I wrote indexed documents. For the most part, the process was straightforward. Where it broke down completely was with acronyms. What’s an acronym? It’s anything you want it to be.
The meaning of acronym used here is as a loose collection of terms that derives from the legitimate vocabulary, abbreviations, jargon (specific to a group), or created terms (made up). Acronym includes acronyms, abbreviations (a shortened version of the word), initialisms (formed from the first letter of each component word), symbolic representations, eponyms, clichés, idioms, metaphors, or any other neologistic term authors can get by editors (including neologistic).
Technically, an acronym is a term using the beginnings of words (from the Greek acro [meaning head] and nym [meaning word]). Letters may also come from the middle of words. There is a popular misconception that an acronym is pronounceable as a normal word; there is no requirement. IBM is as valid an acronym as radar. Such distinction is becoming less necessary anyhow, even if it were actually ever needed at one time. Roots for such misguided beliefs are hard to pinpoint but no doubt lay near the notions that infinitives should never be split, prepositions belong in the middle of the sentence, or that synchronized swimming is really a sport. Although initialisms have been around for a long time (SPQD represented the official name of the Roman republic, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus or liberally interpreted as “The Senate and People of Rome”) and acronyms for considerably shorter (the word acronym first appeared in the dictionary in 1942), their usage and the rate that the old rules are being abandoned has accelerated in the last 30 years. Regardless (and may soon to be irregardless*), through common usage it has come to mean an abbreviation used in a standalone context.
So you think finding acronyms in documents would be easy. They’re not. Starting with the easy ones of three or more all capitals. These include USA, NASA, or ESA. But really, these account for relativity few of the wanted acronyms. For the purposes of this application, acronyms can be grouped by the following:
Regular terms: KDR, ARCU, CoFR, EarthKAM
Regular plural/possessive: KDRs, ARCU’s
Regular repeating: NOB1, NOB2…; SAMS, SAMS-II; MCC-H, MCC-M
The non-standard ones can be handled by creating a canonical list
Regular, non-standard plural/possessive: IP/P: IPs/Ps, IP/Ps
Arbitrary terms: Z; S; W; P; Ku-band; lbs; Rocosmos; no.; N2, aft
The last category is especially problematic. These are terms that are also regular words so differentiating them is difficult. U.S.; “U.S. Lab” (space between terms makes it look like two words); He (atomic symbol for helium, also a third person pronoun); in (inch, also a preposition).
The terms are may not fit the definition of the acronym. “CoFR” has a lower case in it, EarthKAM has an entire word in it, and some, like ICEsat-2, N/A, R&A, Suomi NPP, L1, HS3, and of course “U.S. Lab” almost defy any definitions. In this case, the application has to include an explicit list of words to be considered an acronym for the purposes of indexing. That list has to be handcrafted and maintained over time.
Taken to extremes, since 1965 ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC is the longest English acronym, a US Navy term for “Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command.” The longest, NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT (56 letters, 54 in Cyrillic), is Russian for “The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR.” All this adds importance to the adage “succinctness eschews obfuscation.”
Russian (or other foreign) fonts was supported but the application’s rules enforcing and identifying Russian acronym was less strict.
—
*There is some hope for humanity, still. The Medium.com type editor marked irregardless as a misspelling.