My own medicine

This morning's post comes from the "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" Desk.

I wish we could tie all the acronyms in the world in a bagful of rocks and throw it in the nearest river. But when I wrote about that a few weeks ago, I granted a reprieve to generally well-known acronyms, like FBI.

Of course, the definition of "generally well-known" depends on your audience. As I was reminded by a couple of loving "ahems" from two quite intelligent friends who have been paying close attention to my recent writing. And my increasing use of the term "C-Suite."

I could argue that C-Suite is an abbreviation, not an acronym. I'd win that argument, too. But the larger point is that not everyone understands what it means. "C-Suite" encompasses all those folks with "Chief" in their titles—Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer. A business audience will understand it, but my friends have built careers outside of the corporate world. If you want to speak to a broader audience than that, you'd do well to avoid it.

I said "a business audience will understand it," but as I wrote those words I remembered that, in fact, when I first encountered the term it puzzled me. As has every piece of business jargon I've encountered in over 25 years of writing for the corporate world. The first time one of my Wall Street bosses praised a speech I'd written by saying, "You really added value here, Elaine," I had to suppress a giggle all the way back to my office. "Value" seemed a very odd way to describe creativity. But I digress.

In using the term "C-Suite" without explanation, I had fallen victim to what Chip and Dan Heath call (in their excellent book Made to Stick) the Curse of Knowledge—"the difficulty of remembering what it was like not to know something." I've built a career on not being "cursed" by too much knowledge of the business world. It's how I justified not pursuing an MBA years ago, when I write for so many people who have that degree. I figure my "value" to them is that I can recognize the difference between complex ideas and, you will pardon the expression, bullshit couched in complex language. The former I explain, the latter I call out.

Anyway, lesson learned. "C-Suite" will become, I guess, "leading executives." Excuse me, I've got to go rewrite my marketing materials now.

The Don'ts and Don'ts of Acronyms

--> Yes, yes, I know. These lists are usually "Do's and Don'ts" (note to my fellow grammar nerds, this article explains my choice of punctuation.) 

But when it comes to acronyms, just Don't. Practically ever.

To be clear, I'm not talking about common, everyday acronyms. Say you're writing about the FBI. You wouldn't write "the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), says..." right? It would be "the FBI says..." If you can safely assume that anyone who hasn't just crawled out from under a rock will know what the initials stand for without your spelling it out, by all means use the acronym.

But the rest of the time, don't use acronyms unless you absolutely must. 

Learning these ubiquitous collection of initials is like learning a foreign language. Literally. I know at least one company that hands its new hires an acronym dictionary so they can get fluent before their first day of work. 

Now, sometimes you need to learn a language. You can't order a croissant without speaking at least one word of French—unless you eat "crescent rolls," in which case it's probably best that we never have breakfast together. 

But if you're going to ask me to learn your acronym language, make it worth my while. If you're writing a piece on the Grand Widget Inspector and the term pops up frequently, then by all means let me know it's "the Grand Widget Inspector, also known as the GWI."

And just because legal contracts use the "phrase (acronym)" construction—"Grand Widget Inspector (GWI)"—doesn't mean you have to. 

General Rule of Writing: Unless you're writing a legal contract, don't make your work sound like a legal contract! Find a way to incorporate the acronym into the sentence, as I did at the end of the previous paragraph. It's much more elegant, and doesn't interrupt the flow of the thought.

Few things (in the word world) annoy me more than being asked to learn an acronym when that acronym never appears in the text again. Or when it doesn't reappear for long stretches of time. When that happens, spell out the phrase. Don't make me use precious space in my memory to store the translation.

And never use an acronym in the first sentence. There's no rule requiring you to offer the acronym the first time you use a phrase. Give your readers a chance to get interested in what you're trying to say before you start making them learn that foreign language. Plenty of time to introduce the acronym on the second mention.

I could go on. I will, at some point. But these are my MPPAA (Main Pet Peeves About Acronyms).
TTYL.