SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
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loueee.com
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Editorial Viewpoint
There are still TDM TLAs
The phrase “TDM TLAs” (too darn many three-letter
acronyms) was coined back around 1990 to describe
the ridiculous number of three-letter abbreviations
floating around. Since then, the problem has only
gotten worse.
Sometimes when I’m reading press releases or news
articles, I’m forced to use Google to try to decode the
gobbledygook presented to me. It isn’t helped by the
fact that for any given set of three letters, there are probably a dozen (or more)
possible meanings. It isn’t always easy to figure out which one the writer is
referring to from context!
Take, for example, DRM. If I wrote that DRM was bad (or DRM was good),
what would that mean to you? Am I referring to Digital Rights Management?
Digital Radio Mondiale? Disaster and Risk Management? Document and
Record Management? Design Rules Manual? Design Review Meeting?
Department of Resource Management? Data Recovery Module? (I could go on!)
Did the folks who decided to call it Digital Radio Mondiale really want it
to be confused with something that has negative connotations like Digital
Rights Management? They could at least have called it Mondiale Digital Radio;
MDR does refer to other things already, but nowhere near as many as DRM.
In our articles, we try to spell out any term before we introduce its
abbreviation. For example, if we introduce the concept of a digital-to-analog
converter (DAC), then later we refer to a DAC, the reader should be able to
understand what we mean. It’s when these things come out of the blue, and
often in groups, that they can be perplexing.
Here’s an example of a real sentence someone apparently wrote that I
found online:
Our team is using a CI pipeline with a new API to improve our POC for
the CRM integration, but we ran into issues with the DNS when configuring
the TLS settings. The devs are also considering switching the DB to a more
robust SQL solution after some KPI analysis showed lag in the UX.
Did you get that?
Even if you’re familiar with some IT terms like CRM, TLS and SQL, you
probably won’t know all of those terms, and you’ll have to go off searching
for a while before you can decode that sentence. It’s really only helpful to
experts in the field, so if you’re writing like that, you’d better be sure of who
your audience is.
It certainly doesn’t help that some of those terms have multiple meanings.
For example, POC can be Point of Contact, Proof of Concept, Power Converter
and some other, less flattering things (similar to POS).
I have a sinking feeling that regardless of what I write here, the overcrowded
list of abbreviations is only going to grow with time. Still, perhaps by ‘raising
awareness’, we can work together to resist this scourge on our language.
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by Nicholas Vinen
24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204
2
Silicon Chip
Australia's electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
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