Yesterday we talked a little bit about the evolution of the English language, and how the language has shifted over the years, with new words being added as part of the ongoing changes in society, technology, literature, and the arts. Since we know some of you were AWOL yesterday and didn’t check in with the blog (perhaps you were off scuba diving?) you can click here and catch up.

AWOL and scuba are acronyms that have been added to the English language relatively recently. An acronym is a word that has been formed by combining some letters (usually the first letter) from each of a series of other words into one single word that refers to the whole. For example, AWOL (pronounced AY-wall) stands for Absent WithOut Leave, and scuba (SKOO-bah) refers to a Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

New technology creates new acronyms (also referred to as initialisms) such as URL, JPG, and WYSIWYG. In general, the difference between an acronym and an initialism is whether or not the word is pronounced as a single word, or if the letters themselves are pronounced individually. For example, most people refer to “a U-R-L” (Uniform Resource Locator) rather than saying “an url.” On the other hand, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is a single word pronounced “WIH-zee-wig” that describes software editing applications which allow the user to create documents or web pages while looking at the final product rather than the underlying code. The acronym JPG (a type of digital image format standardized by the Joint Photographic Experts Group) is in the middle of the two, because it’s most often pronounced “J-peg,” combining the letter feature of an initialism with the spoken-word characteristic of an acronym.

Acronyms are abbreviations: they shorten a word or a series of words. Abbreviations can take many forms when creating new words, such as e-mail, where an abbreviated version of the word electronic is added to the word mail. Other abbreviations are relegated to the written form of English rather than the spoken form. A good example of this category of abbreviation is Dr., a written shortened form of the polite title Doctor, used when formally addressing someone in the medical profession and/or with an advanced university degree (a doctorate). However, if you were reading a letter out loud, you wouldn’t say “Dear Durr Smith.”

Of course, these days the main sources of abbreviations and acronyms are on-line chats and text messaging. We might explore this 21st-century phenomenon in a future post, but we’re out of time. TTFN!