original publish date: 30th March, 2010

decades on …

I’d like to say that I get no joy from pointing out to people who smugly use TLA as an autological acronym that it is not, in fact, an acronym, but I’d be lying.

I wish I were a better person.

And I recognise the hypocrisy, with grammatical judgment coming from someone who has (and likely still would) upset every English teacher who ever had the misfortune of marking his work.

transcript

FTE #1: What is a BPQ? I said I wanted no acronyms in this presentation!

FTE #2: Technically, BPQ is an initialism, not an acronym.

Caption: Subtle distinctions are rarely appreciated.