Cleaning Up Our (Computing) Language
The computer industry is rife with abbreviations--so many that we have an abbreviation ("TLA") to describe a subset of them. Sometimes people will even try to, er, acronymize a perfectly normal noun by typing it in all caps--all y'all calling an Apple computer a "MAC," please stop; it's not an acronym and never has been one.
Not every string of capital letters is bad. Sometimes, as with "USB" and "DSL," there's no accepted real-word equivalent. Too often, though, people latch on to these cryptic, compressed nouns when they don't have to.
Consider the following examples of abbreviations that convey no more info--at least to laypeople--than the words that follow them:
| RAM | memory |
| CPU | processor |
| HD | hard drive |
| URL | address |
| ISP | Internet provider or Internet service |
| WLAN | WiFi or wireless networking |
| SSID | network name (on a WiFi network) |
| MFP | printer/scanner or printer/scanner/fax machine |
Got any other unnecessary abbreviations you'd like to put on the chopping block?
By
Rob Pegoraro
|
February 17, 2007; 2:00 PM ET
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The business we have chosen
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