With the acronyms!! Jeez!

Some of the newer (and I assume more passing) abbreviations have had me confused.

Like AOC, for example.
I first thought it was a metal band, like AC/DC.

I was also quite surprised to figure out that "PA" means "President of America", and it's not the public address system.
If you were ever in a band in the 1990's - the microphones and amplifiers.
For example, we've finally got a gig and 200 people pitched, but the dude who was supposed to bring the PA system had a bit of an OD last night.

Although most acronyms still retain their original meaning, like Lotto (losing often to terrible odds).

originally posted by: halfoldman
I was also quite surprised to figure out that "PA" means "President of America", and it's not the public address system.

That's a totally new one on me, I've never in my life heard anyone use PA for referencing the president. it's always been POTUS -- President Of The United States.
That's extremely common stateside. But not President of America abbreviated to PA, at least not in FL and not in MI.

I'm assuming it's (PA) a non-American reference?

a reply to: Nyiah

Now that you mention it, not sure, struggling to find those posts again.

And for a few weeks there were tons on "AOC" and "PA", and as a South African I really struggled to get any meaning.
But strangely that seems to have passed somewhat.

a reply to: halfoldman

I was also quite surprised to figure out that "PA" means "President of America", and it's not the public address system.

PA is also the abbreviation for the state of Pennsylvania, if i'm not mistaken it is also used for the country of Panama plus about a 235 other things.

What does PA stand for?

i ilked it better when the abbreviations for states were three letters before the USPS changed them, although some had two then to, oddly enough Pennsylvania was Pa. then.
can't say i've ever heard of PA being used for the President of the United States, all i ever heard was POTUS.

originally posted by: hounddoghowlie
a reply to: TheMirrorSelf

sign that your a boomer and you maybe shouldn't be using the internet.

you have difficulty figuring our what acronyms mean.

seriously i'd rather deal with acronyms than the stupid a@@ abbreviation of words.
the two that get on my nerves lately are vacay, and nuggs.
just plain laziness not to use a whole word.

Thats rather hostile, Id say. Disrespectful.

Im on the internet since compuserve, wait, before that even, ARPANET. Thats Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Most universities Computer Science depts had some ability to access statistical data that was made available. I was a CS major, but switched to IT Information Technology, when that major became available. I retired after writing web apps in early html, hypertext markup language, and Cold Fusion (a tidy little set of meta tags that played nicely with Oracle databases.

There is a lesson in this….

a reply to: TheMirrorSelf

What?! You don't have an ATS decoder ring?? You need to take a acronym crash course at DARPA and quit your whining.

Alphabetic Collocation Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory causing A Crazy Reminder Of Names You Misplaced.

Kidding.

I'm guilty as well, but do try to spell them out and/or link them to a wiki. Back when I was writing white papers & test plans I always included an appendix for acronyms.

a reply to: halfoldman
I've seen POTUS, never PA for the president.

originally posted by: halfoldman
Like AOC, for example.
I first thought it was a metal band, like AC/DC.

The first time I saw AOC I thought "why are they talking about a brand of computer monitors"?

originally posted by: TheMirrorSelf
Just writing quickly to implore people to cool it a bit with the acronyms (yeah, I'm talking to you HawkEyi). Seriously though, I know I'm new and a lot of people might be familiar with some of these acronyms, but certainly not everyone (case in point). If you're going to make a thread, some of which are quite long, take a moment to just spell out the acronym or, if you're going to use it throughout the thread, do the old "National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)".

I'm guilty of not spelling out NASA, because I think it's common enough that the vast majority of people will know what it is. In the rare case where someone doesn't know, it's an easy one to search on a search engine.

If acronyms are less well known, I might or might not follow that protocol of spelling it out when using it the first time (IIRC for example, is simply a caveat that my statement is from memory which may or may not be correct (If I Recall Correctly), so even if someone doesn't know what that means, they should be able to understand the rest of the post without that caveat.

If the acronym is rarely used, or ambiguous, I definitely try to spell it out.

Usually I can figure them out, but a few cases have given me ambiguous search results.

In one case, I got over 50 search results for TDL, where someone here wrote something along the lines of "something from TDL", and none of those 50 seemed to fit. After a few minutes it finally dawned on me that TDL was intended to mean "Tom DeLonge", sort of, though I think the correct initials would be TD, so that's a killer when people make up their own acronyms. If I wasn't familiar with Tom DeLonge I might have had to ask about that one.

My TL;DR point is the less well known the acronym, the greater the need to spell it out (the first time you use it).

originally posted by: Bigburgh
When I first joined ATS years ago, this I swear was one of the rules of ats.

Can you cite that rule please? Old editions of the ATS terms and conditions are available in the Wayback machine, but I don't remember it and my ID is older than yours.

I do remember a moderator writing a thread pleading with people to spell out their acronyms, or something like that, could you be thinking of that? But I don't think that thread referred to any rule.