Oh, For Goodness Sake, Please Don’t Use Acronyms.
I have this one friend, and apparently she thinks I apparently have all these awesome sneakified tricks up my sleeve because whenever I see her she asks me for some sort of business tip.
Which sounds kind of annoying, except that when it’s her I really don’t mind.
Anyway, I always just say the first thing that comes into my head.
And the last time this happened, the first thing that came into my head was this:
Don’t. Use. Acronyms.
And then she said, “Huh?”
And I said, “I’m so turning this into a blog post.”
So here it is. No acronyms.
Internal acronyms are fine — it’s when you’re using them in public that you want to be careful.
So in my own business, if I’m leaving a message for one of the people on my pirate crew, I can still use acronyms as shorthand.
I can refer to Shiva Nata as ShNa. And I do.
Or the emergency calming techniques can go by ECT. That’s fine for internal communication.
But it’s not cool if I expect you guys to know what the hell I’m talking about.
Obviously, the poor … oh, five subscribers to my noozletter back in — oh dear — December 2005 had to deal with receiving their issue of “TFS News”.*
And yes, I’m sure they were all completely confused. Yes, TFS stands for The Fluent Self and that was incredibly obvious to … well, mostly me.
*But now that thousands and thousands of people read even the most ridiculous things that I write? I still don’t get to use acronyms. I know, it’s not fair.
But doesn’t it make you seem more biggified if you have an acronym?
No.
Best case scenario is that people have to do an extra few calculations in their heads to figure out what you’re talking about. Worst case is the whole “a confused mind says no” thing.
And it really is confusing. Just not to you. Because it’s your thing and you hang out with it all the time.
Anyway, lots of people (probably even most people) already think you’re all biggified because you have a website and maybe even a blog or a noozletter and stuff.
But what about “brand recognition”?
And lest you think that I’m a total icky marketing-ey person for saying “brand recognition” (oh, and “marketing”), let me just make it clear that this was her question.
She was worried that if she stopped referring to her thing as a series of letters strung together, that people might not take it as seriously. Or that they wouldn’t even remember it.
And this is a legitimate worry. I mean, you’re allowed to feel worried if that’s what you’re feeling.
It does feel scary when we desperately want people to remember who we are.
Here’s the thing, though.
It doesn’t work that way.
You’re not IBM.
And neither am I.
The same goes for people who are way more biggified than I am.
The likelihood that any of us — no matter how biggified or how just-starting-out — are going to come up with an acronym that is so sticky and so memorable that people are going to instantly know what it is when they see it…
Not very high.
I’ve been subscribing to Alon Sagee‘s excellent Yoga Business Journal for years — and I never, ever remember what YBJ stands for.
Back when I still got email, I subscribed to hundreds of noozletters and they all began with a string of initials and I never knew what anything was.
Even when I went to Vancouver to spend an entire weekend studying about how to become Beyond Booked Solid with Michael Port… I still had to work (each time!) to figure out what the damn BBS stood for on the handouts.
People just aren’t going to remember your thing.
At least not the acronym version of your thing.
But they will remember you. And your duck, if you have one.
So that brings us back to the whole “brand recognition” thing (apologies for the fact that I still don’t really have a non-gross word for that).
What you do want to do is get your name out there. You want people to remember your name — to remember your essence. Not a random amalgamation of letters that have no reason to stick in their head.
But you want to keep being you out loud. To keep reminding people that yeah, you’re there and you have a thing.
You know, like this:
“Hi. I’m Havi!
Or @havi if you’re a Twitter person. Kazoo!
No, it’s pronounced HA-vee. Pretend my name is Harvey and you have a Boston accent. Nice.
And this is my business partner. Her name is Selma. Yes, she is a duck.”
Well, maybe not really like that.
But the point is that if you are there and being all you-ish, and you show up even fairly regularly, you don’t have to keep bonking people over the head with an acronym that they will never remember anyway.
You hang out. You talk to people.
You find the ones you like.
Acronyms are empty. Words and names and ideas and conversations are what is memorable.
Unless, of course, you have a really good one that also sounds like a word. A word that means something and is actually related to what you do.
So if your thing is that you train dancing poodles, and your noozletter is called Poodle Operators On Delicate Little Equipment then maybe (but really probably not) you could make it work.
Because FDLFUA (friends don’t let friends use acronyms).
And … today’s hippie-ass Comment Zen (which I’m not calling CZ, because that would be confusing)
When I write a post which is funny or funny-ish (or — heaven forbid, tfu tfu tfu — sarcastic and a bit rant-ey), we tend to get a few “how dare you speak to me like that”s and “who do you think you are”s.
So: you don’t have to agree with me. I have no interest in dictating your personal experience of acronyms.
And you have choices. You can find someone whose sense of humor and self-expression is more to your liking. Or you can say, “Hey, sweetie. I have a different opinion on this.”
I just ask that you speak carefully, that you speak about your feelings and experiences instead of putting it all onto me, and that you try not to throw shoes.
In return, I commit to interacting with your ideas and with my own stuff as compassionately and honestly as is possible for me. Thanks!
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Totally agree with you. There is only one exception I can think of, and that’s if you have one of those acronyms which actually spells a word that has something to do with your thing … and even then, be careful. It would have to be really obvious even to people who never heard of your thing before, and that’s difficult to achieve.
.-= Anna-Liza´s last post … Requiem =-.
tptka…
This post totally kicked ass.
.-= Baker´s last post … The Power of Resourcefulness: A Guide to Peeing in the Shower =-.
I hate acronyms. Even internally (but guilty of using them anyway). I worked at Boeing for 2 years way back when… Oh dear. You want acronyms? EVERYTHING was an acronym. There was BCS (Boeing Computer Services). There was BECU (Boeing Employee Credit Union). And don’t get me started on the ones that the government imposed on us.
The problem with acronyms is that they can stand for different things in different contexts. Out here the churches all have signs in April-August advertising their VBS! It took me a MONTH to realize that they weren’t talking about a “virtual basic script” but “vacation bible school”. POS – Point of Sale. Point of Service. Piece of S*#$. (hee) I won’t go on, but you may have sparked a blog post for me… 🙂
And your BBS – to me, as an OLD techie, that’s a Bulletin Board System.
.-= G. Romilly´s last post … My not-quite-a-UFO pile – Cats by Kelly =-.
Ah, good ranting. Yes. This.
Brand recognition? OK, that’s good, pick a colour, or two colours together. Have a little image, or a really special font. A short string of capital letters is kind of the worst thing you could pick as a brand. Even numbers might be better. (Bars and clubs do numbers sometimes, don’t they?)
Especially if you ALSO use the fully written out version, because then you’re making people remember two different things. Even if they’re linked, that’s still bolsheviks.
FDLFUA. Words to live by.
Yup, good points. I’m afraid the first thing that tends to come to mind when people over-acronymise at me is this passage from Winnie-the-Pooh:
And then this Bear, Pooh Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, F. O. P. (Friend of Piglet’s), R. C. (Rabbit’s Companion), P. D. (Pole Discoverer), E. C. and T. F. (Eeyore’s Comforter and Tail-finder)–in fact, Pooh himself–said something so clever that Christopher Robin could only look at him with mouth open and eyes staring, wondering if this was really the Bear of Very Little Brain whom he had know and loved so long.
Literary patterns laid down in early youth die hard, it seems!
Also, thank you (again) for the part about “being you out loud”.
.-= Lean Ni Chuilleanain´s last post … Very Secret Mysteries, no. 3: Crochet =-.
Yes. I complain about this – especially because we have too many internal acronyms for anyone to remember, much like Boeing I imagine. Imagine my reaction when someone told me about their favorite place to work off-site and referred to it by an acronym. No idea what they meant. It was a restaurant. Yes, they have even given restaurants acronyms. I think that’s a sign that you use them way too much.
I changed my note in instant messenger to say PCBA (Perpetually Confused by Acronyms). Hey – if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?
.-= elizabeth´s last post … nature’s bounty =-.
Ah, yes. I have used the dreaded acronym when sending my newsletter.. though it kinda sorta worked as a word: (Grace in Gravity: GiG), and I have referred to doing shiatsu ‘gigs’.. but still, probably asking people to think WAY too much. Must go back to drawing board…
We joke a bit in our family about our name acronyms.. we have a JAM (he loves music and is prone to spontaneous beat-boxing) and a REM (strangely enough he’s become obsessed with screwing around with his sleep patterns) LOL.
Anyway… good post. 🙂
Love, GLM from GiG
.-= Gina´s last post … Stuff I Swear By – Kale =-.
I think acronyms wind up working only when people become familiar enough with them (and what they represent) that they no longer see the letters and immediately start trying to put words to them. E.g., when we see IBM, very few of us read it as “International Business Machines.” We read it as IBM–a “word” unto itself that represents a company.
Same thing when you write “ShNa” in our internal communications–my brain doesn’t expand that to “Shiva Nata,” it just connects ShNa with the concept/thing it represents.
Sort of like learning a foreign language, when your brain finally stops translating from the new language into English and just starts associating the new language’s words with the concepts directly.
I *like* acronyms. But I also am prone to seeing the acronyms as a whole word unto themselves and associating the acronym as a whole with the concept it represents. It “clicks” for me. I just immediately makes sense.
But then again, (a) I pick up foreign languages really easily and (b) I’m a little odd. 😉
In general, I think you’re right–acronyms aren’t a wise move because most people are going to process them as individual words abbreviated into a string of letters, rather than as a “word” of its own. And introducing an extra step into your “brand recognition” (the step of expanding the abbreviation into the words it represents) is making your right people think too hard over something that should be simple. KISS! (Keep it simple, stupid/sweetie/surely. And no, I couldn’t resist.) DMMT! (Don’t make me think! Really, I’m stopping now.)
BTWYABAU*.
Love,
Marissa
*by the way, you are brilliant, as usual. And I’m stopping for real this time. 🙂
.-= Marissa´s last post … Tim Ferriss’s missing link and why your business needs a Rosie =-.
Okay, after THIS I’m stopping. Seriously.
One other thought–acronyms work best for people/companies who don’t switch back and forth between the acronym and the spelled-out words. Again, using IBM as an example, IBM *is* the business entity. Nabisco *is* the company (so much so that people usually don’t even realize that it’s Na-Bis-Co, an abbreviation for National Biscuit Company).
If you *only* presented your business as TFS, people would grow to know it as TFS–but not because the acronym made sense, just because that’s what it is. It’s TFS. And when asked, “Does TFS stand for something?” people would think, “Um, yeah, I think so, but I don’t know what.” Your business identity kind of has to *be* the acronym for the acronym to really work.
My website is my name, so the acronym would just be MB. Generic. I could use my middle initial and use that as an acronym, but that acronym is already pretty well associated with a major American sport (MLB). 🙂
Dig the post. And honest to goddess, I’m stopping FOR REAL now.
.-= Marissa´s last post … Tim Ferriss’s missing link and why your business needs a Rosie =-.
I’m not going to say anything of import, and instead share my two favorite acronym jokes.
#1 will only be funny to people who were computer geeks about a decade ago, but here goes anyway. Remember those little cards you used to put in laptops? Back before USB, and back before they were renamed to “PC cards”, they were called PCMCIA cards. And that stood for: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
And #2 is “RAS Syndrome”, which stands for “Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome”. This is what people do when they say things like “ATM machine”, which stands for “Automatic Teller Machine machine”, or “HIV virus”, which expands to “Human Immunodeficiency Virus virus”. When people say those sorts of things, they’re suffering from RAS Syndrome. (:
.-= Pace´s last post … Book Bonanza Wednesday! Chapter 30: It’s okay to have problems =-.
Ha! How about RSAC for Really Silly Acronym Company? Or SSSSS for Soul Sucking Scene Stealing Sleazoids?
See? Acronyms can be fun! 🙂
The trouble with most acronyms is that they have no resonance. They don’t sound their note, they have no soul, and so I don’t remember them.
You and Selma, on the other hand, are unforgettable!
Love, Hiro
.-= Hiro Boga´s last post … Remembering Hiroshima =-.
@Pace HEEHEE!
And if you’re suffering from RAS Syndrome, you probably also work at:
The Department of Redundancy Dept.
Box 101010
New York, New York, 010101
OK. I’ll stop being silly now and go write Release Notes. 😉
.-= G. Romilly´s last post … My not-quite-a-UFO pile – Cats by Kelly =-.
And friends I had in university joked that IBM was the Itty Bitty Machine company. Much better.
In fact I think SPAM (the meat-product) is an acronym for something but I can’t recall what now. Which only confirms Marissa’s most excellent point.
I do like some of the acronym type shorthand in e-mail and text and twitter and such. Like OMG, PITA, and WTF. But that is a different usage altogether.
.-= JoVE´s last post … SSHRC grant review: early bird ends August 15 =-.
I get acronym dyslexia sometimes when I’m writing my clients acronyms on the big visual murals I do. When I’m really into the flow of the process I’m in my right brain, and then I have to stop and literally switch to the left side of my brain to spell out an acronym.
I did a big job for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and you’ve never seen more acronyms under a single roof. Loooong acronyms like this: CDC/CCHP/NCCDPHP, which someone uses after their name on their email. Sheesh!
Talk about a learning curve when you go to work there–must take months to figure out what all the departments are called.
I believe SPAM is SPiced hAM. And I know BBS is Bulletin Board System. Does that make me old?
.-= Barbara J Carter´s last post … Good times at the gallery =-.
The US government is so fond of acronyms that there’s an acronym for it: TLA, for Three Letter Acronym. Everything has to be given a TLA. And I understand the US military is similarly afflicted.
.-= Barbara J Carter´s last post … Good times at the gallery =-.
There’s a game I play, where the players routinely discuss the components as acronyms rather than their full names — so the developers got revenge by making a component whose acronym is ACRONYM! *g* Of course we players now call it “Acro” because we’re evil, but that’s another story. 😉
.-= Amy Crook´s last post … Features, Benefits, and the eternal Why =-.
!!!
@Pace – oh, you made me spit all over my computer! You and Marissa. I totally have Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome.
And I have to admit that I’m completely obsessed with the German acronymization stuff even if it does have a troubled history (who told me that Hanuta was Haselnuss-Tafel?).
@Barbara – TLA for Three Letter Acronym is pretty great too. Love it.
@Elizabeth – am also going to borrow your “PCBA (Perpetually Confused by Acronyms)”. Awesome.
Yay.
@Pace – Funny!!!
I’ve heard some pretty good computer tech acronyms…and forgotten most of them. But the one that still makes me chuckle is the one that techies apparently use frequently to describe non-techies like me:
PICNIC
(Problem In Chair, Not In Computer)
.-= Michelle Russell´s last post … In Which I Learn to Start Stopping =-.
I blame acronyms on this weird misuse of possessives as plurals. Examples: “puppy’s” instead of “puppies”, “special’s” instead of “specials”…. you get the deal.
And this is my theory:
Commonly used acronyms like Compact Discs becoming C.D. quickly became CD without the periods and then people felt were unsure writing about their CDs and someone somewhere got the idea to write CD’s, VCR’s, DVD’s, etc.
And now it is creeeeeeeping into everything and it drives me crazy.
.-= melissa´s last post … Skunk! =-.
My favouritest acronyms:
The geeky: A tech support diagnosis of PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair)
The cranky: A rejection of a job application – the FOAD letter (F*** Off And Die)
And the lazy: we all know about TGIF, but over here we prefer to call it POETS day (Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday)
Oh dear. I just ignored all of the post’s advice. Uh oh. SCAMWART. (Selma’s Coming After Me With A Really Tiny Sabre – she is a *pirate* duck after all)
I thought I would be cute and put at the beginning of that post
and then at the end forgetting your comments allow html.
Oops. My humor was lost.
And I look like a grammar nut.
.-= melissa´s last post … Skunk! =-.
Changing acronyms especially bug me.
Until I was 38, FTW was “f**k the world” but then gamers took over and now it’s “for the win.” WTF?
Here’s an acronym for you: MUST which back in the days of Vietnam was really called Medical Unit Self-contained Transportable. Operating rooms that could be dropped from helicpoters and set up anywhere. But then the military is famous for all its acronums.
I’m with you, I hate them, and even internally they can be a pain to remember.
Okay not that I think they are quite right but just brain storming.
How about hit-it-off-ness in place of brand recognition?
or crazestickness or personalsticky.
Please don’t throw rotten tomatoes this is just how the right word will be born.
One time I wrote a love letter using a single, gigantic acronym. I had a secret crush on a coworker but couldn’t bear to reveal my feelings. So, we had a going away party for him and I signed the gigantic poster they were circulating by writing something like this:
“GBJIAGTMYSMBIHSACOYAIHYCBSBIDTICLWYILY!!!!!
–Kelly”
He continued to think I was really weird. And, naturally, I refused to tell him what it meant.
So, yeah, acronyms don’t work too well.
One of the people in my building at work, but not in my department, frequently sends out emails full of acronyms. Half the time I don’t have a clue what the email is actually saying.
To me, CZ is cubic zirconia. If someone uses it to mean something else, yeah, I’ll be really confused.
.-= Riin´s last post … Amazing =-.
Wow! For years I thought I was just totally out of it because I’d get so lost in folks’ acronyms and dread them, and even the most thoughtful people seemed eager to turn their ideas into acronyms. I would usually just stop trying to read their stuff, even if it was good, because I’d get tired of going back to the beginning or previous articles to figure out what they were talking about. At best, I find them to be bumps in the road.
So thank you, Havi, for encouraging an acronym-free zone!
Oh, I am not a businesswoman, but I SO COMPLETELY AGREE. I can never remember the acronym. Ever. Ever ever ever.
@Kelly – man, you are so cute!
@Stacy – I’m kinda liking crazestickness. It has a certain … something.
Yay.
I was just lamenting this yesterday! One of my clients right now is a non-profit and that means we’re always talking about other non-profits- and the non-profit world is the BIGGEST offender of the acronym badness.
I’m always stumbling over NAPSE or PSAL or- hold onto your seats, this is a real one- CCSNYS. Try saying that one 5 times fast…
I think acronyms are a result of basic human laziness…any opportunity to lessen the amount of energy it might take to speak or write our minds. I mean, really…where are we off to in such a hurry?
So yeah, I agree with you, Havi. Let’s slow down and use our words.
Post Script – Pirate Queens would never talk or write in acronyms…it would dilute the power of their incantations!
.-= Tea Silvestre´s last post … Using your Values as a Sales Tool =-.
I think…. acronyms are cool when they are organic. When they are created by the users or fans and arrive just as a consequence of daily use.
I used to have a web site called “Five Horizons”. We never abbreviated it, but one day, we saw a usenet post where one of the fans of the site called it “5h”. Soon everyone started to use the abbreviation. The name stuck. So we started to use it, too. Frankly it was easier to fit ‘5h’ on a button than “five horizons”.
I used to work for Microsoft so otherwise I agree with you about acronyms. But, as a dissenting opinion there, I knew plenty of people at MSFT that made fun of them. For example, we had a super-secret email group called SUSHI which was Special Users Seeing Happenings Interaction (if you looked in the Official Address Book) but was really a bunch of us who liked to go have sushi for lunch together.
Oh, Havi, thank you so much for this post. It is so on point and true, and it was so funny I just laughed my ass off (which I formerly would have written as LMAOd, but not since I done seen the light).
One thing I want to throw in is a personal anecdote. My (nick)name, Pidge, is an acronym. It’s made up of the first letters of the first names of my mother’s bridge club partners. P (for Patricia), I (for Imogene) D (for Doris) G (which is supposed to be J for Jean, Jane, and Joan but looks better spelled with a G), and E (for Everybody Else).
And that’s a cute story that I get to tell, over and over. And when I wrote my autobiographical one person show, I called it “P.I.D.G.E.: My Life as an Acronym”. Which is a cute title. But only if you already know me and know the story. If you’re Joe Theatregoer from off the street, you look at that title and go “WHAT?” And it doesn’t make you want to come in and see the show because you have no clue what it’s going to be about. Which doesn’t make you want to buy a ticket.
So even if you ARE an acronym, or your name is one, don’t LEAD with that. Because to someone else, PIDGE might stand for Pain In De Gluteus Erea, or something else entirely.
Which, I think, underscores your whole point. Or, maybe it doesn’t. I’ve been up since 4 am working on rewrites for this one person show (now NOT titled as above, but not publicly retitled yet because I”m still working on the title), and it could just be the sleep deprivation talking.
But thanks again, Havi. LOVED this post. This is me smiling ear to ear.
Oh, Lord, acronyms. I work in government contracting for my day job, so everything ever has an acronym (and if not, they’ll make one up on the spot). Our house style dictates spelling out acronyms on first use in documents, and occasionally we have to fight authors who insist that everyone who reads this document ever will already know all those acronyms, so they shouldn’t have to spell them out.
@Pidge – you win for the coolest story! Also for *being* an acronym (I mean, having your name be one).
That is AWESOME. And I had no idea! Here I am always thinking “Pidge … isn’t that just the sweetest name ever?” and wow.
(And I personally would buy a ticket to a show called My Life As An Acronym …)
@Tea – incantations! wheeee!
You guys are so. much. fun.