Tomson Eric (Yahoo.fr) wrote:
- an acronym is a word composed of initials ; e.g.: ASAP, LASER, NATO,
OSI, RADAR, SCUBA, are well-known acronyms. They sound like words, while
they are actually groups of initials.
- initials are the first letters of words ; e.g.: IETF, CIA, FBI, IBM,
RFC, TCP, are well-known initials, too complex to be used as acronyms.
I never heard this distinction before today. It seems like a pretty
strange hair to split in a written forum like the IETF. It boils down
to how hard a series of letters is to pronounce in English; but most of
our communication doesn't get pronounced.
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