I just read an email that says: I'm looking for a CMS system for work.
CMS, as you may or may not know, is an acronym for Content Management System. Presumably the person who wrote this email was not actually looking for a system of Content Management Systems (what a frightening concept), but rather just a CMS. I started to write a reply, but then I wondered if it wasn't already too late. I decided to investigate if CMS has already succumbed to RAS syndrome, which claimed such friendly acronyms as PIN number and ATM machine. It turns out RAS syndrome has even claimed JEB (John Ellis Bush) Bush! This may even call for an FBI investigation, but I'll do what I can as an average citizens concerned about RAS Syndrome.
The following is a comparison of Google results for acronyms in their redundant form, standard form, and the percent of redundancy:
| PIN number | 2,540,000 | PIN | 78,100,000 | 3.54% redundant |
| CMS system | 2,540,000 | CMS | 78,300,000 | 3.24% redundant |
| ATM machine | 751,000 | ATM | 35,700,000 | 2.10% redundant |
| HIV virus | 1,260,000 | HIV | 119,000,000 | 1.06% redundant |
| RSS syndication | 2,370,000 | RSS | 877,000,000 | 0.27% redundant |
| CSS style sheet | 179,000 | CSS | 216,000,000 | 0.08% redundant |
| VIP person | 8,890 | VIP | 32,200,000 | 0.03% redundant |
Alas, it appears CMS system is too far along to save. It would be interesting to see a graph of these numbers as they change over time, and an acronym fades into redundancy. But probably only interesting to me.
Jessica, there are also mixtures of initialisms and acronyms: CD-ROM (Wikipedia wrongly refers to it being an initialism), jpeg
But I don't know of any suffering from what should now be referred to as the RI&AS syndrome ! Unless we keep RAS syndrome, with A standing for Abbreviation, what would cover both Initialisms and Acronyms...