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Viewpoint
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Viewpoint Archive
E-Discovery: The New Reality—Sissy Holloman, University of North Carolina Hospitals, and Sharon L. Klein, Pepper Hamilton, LLP
Educational Technology: "I didn't need it why do they?"—Jill Jemison, University of Vermont School of Medicine
The Money Bone's Connected to the Service Bone—Wayne Thompson, CIO, University of New Jersey School of Medicine and Dentistry
Acronyms and Other Crimes Against Nature—Vince Sheehan,
Chief Information Officer and Associate Dean of Information Technology, Indiana University School of Medicine (March 2007)
The Value of Information—Morgan Passiment,
Director of Information Resources Outreach and Liaison, AAMC (Nov. 2006)
GIR Introduces New Leadership Resource—A. Jerome York, Vice President and CIO, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio (Sept. 2006)
A Word from the GIR Steering Committee Chair—James E. McNamee, Ph.D., Chair, GIR Steering Committee; Associate Dean of Information Services and CIO, University of Maryland School of Medicine (Aug. 2006)
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Acronyms and Other Crimes Against Nature
By Vince Sheehan
Indiana University School of Medicine
Chief Information Officer and Associate Dean of Information Technology
At a recent Managers' meeting I made the following statement: "At yesterday's
TAC, their CSO mentioned we're having trouble with VPN connectivity at
the M.O.B. They are also starting a project to scan all PCs. User data
will be migrated to a NAS via a collection tool from ACI. The tool will
be pushed out and invoked via SMS and will write the information to an
XML file. We need to let the LSPs know the schedule."
I paused, thought about what I had just said, and remarked, "I believe
I just used up my daily allotment of TLAs."
The managers know that "TLA" stands for Three-Letter Acronym (let's not
quibble about the difference between Acronyms and Initialism; for now,
we'll use "acronym" for both meanings).
I have only anecdotal data, but I believe we folks in Information Services
are second only to the military as the worst abusers of acronyms. And
acronyms can be dastardly little devils. While they are intended to speed
up conversation and writing, they can also confuse and obfuscate. In this
instance, all the managers knew every acronym. It was only a few months
ago, however, that we began referring to the Medical Office Building as
the "M.O.B.". We sometimes use that acronym in meetings with others and
they have to interrupt the meeting to ask, "What's the M.O.B.?"
Acronyms are often used as a secret language, especially among the young.
Due to text messaging, the use of acronyms has exploded as a tool of convenience:
"LOL" is much easier to type on a small keypad than "Laughing Out Loud".
There are websites dedicated to defining this new language, although I
can't imagine how they stay current. With the increased use of Blackberrys,
I have noticed an equal increase in the use of these shortcuts among us
oldsters as well.
Another disturbing trend is the use of emoticons. If you have to use
a contrived symbol to tell me something is funny, then maybe it's not
funny. Let your words speak your intent; I'm smart enough to know when
you're kidding and when you're being serious.
I recently attended Indiana University's Freshman Orientation with my
son. During one session, the department chair of Telecommunications gave
excellent advice about attending class, taking advantage of office hours,
and getting to know the instructors. He also drew a distinction between
emails among friends and emails to your professor. He stated that grammar,
punctuation, and sentence structure were just as important in an email
as they were in a term paper. The parents all clapped, while the incoming
freshmen sent OMG text messages to each other on their cellphones.
While acronyms often make communications simpler, they rarely enhance
the experience. I therefore propose we start a new organization to be
known as Ban-Acronyms-By-Enhancing-Language.
We'll call it BABEL for short.
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