comments | Tracking RAS Syndrome with Google | typewriting

Comment by jessica

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 19:45:05 -0700

PIN is the only acronym you listed. the others are initialisms (acronyms sound like a word, initialisms are spelled out). in the u.s. we aren't only redundant with abbreviations. "the hoi polloi" means "the the masses," "lukewarm" means "warm warm." if you're interested, KBPS out of san diego has a show called "a way with words" (and it's podcasted!) and they talked in their last episode about these kinds of redundancies. google it, i can't post links here.

Comment by Phil

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 22:29:10 -0700

That is hilarious.

Comment by bob villa

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 11:22:39 -0700

um, jessica schooled you sucka!

Comment by prof

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:45:01 -0800

Thank you Scott for this nice article, but I cannot resist :
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...