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Absolutely Ed. The military (the king of acronyms) did the same thing. There were rules (regulations) on how to write documents. The first time in the document you wrote 'A thing' you spelled it out followed by the acronym in parenthesis. After that the acronym was used through the document.

I am not sure that is still true today in the military. They have dumed down in those areas.
John & Mary Burger
Eagle's Lair Woodshop
Hooper, UT

In my early years working for US Navy, I wrote lots of letters and memos. They had to be written according to all the rules, and there were people checking. Later, we simply stopped writing those formal pieces. Emails and slides seemed to take over, and the rules never applied to them.

Am I right that in the nuke world abbreviations and acronyms were prohibited to avoid misunderstandings?

davebodner wrote:

Absolutely Ed. The military (the king of acronyms) did the same thing. There were rules (regulations) on how to write documents. The first time in the document you wrote 'A thing' you spelled it out followed by the acronym in parenthesis. After that the acronym was used through the document.

I am not sure that is still true today in the military. They have dumed down in those areas.
John & Mary Burger
Eagle's Lair Woodshop
Hooper, UT

In my early years working for US Navy, I wrote lots of letters and memos. They had to be written according to all the rules, and there were people checking. Later, we simply stopped writing those formal pieces. Emails and slides seemed to take over, and the rules never applied to them.

Am I right that in the nuke world abbreviations and acronyms were prohibited to avoid misunderstandings?

My experience was that the abbreviations were used often. If someone was not familiar with the acronyms for different ratings it could be hard to understand what people were talking about. In writing it was acronyms only that was used within the community but anything that could be seen outside the community was explained the first time it was used. Somethings were always abbreviated because they were referenced from a source that used a common abbreviation. I was assigned to a couple of ships and facilities doing quality assurance on nuclear submarine repairs, a very small community with very strict rules and regulations on how things had to be done. But my experience could be different from the general US Navy as I did not do a lot of correspondence outside of the repair facilities.

If I remember correctly the Air Force had a regulation or manual that defined all the acronyms that could be used and those were the only ones that were to be used. You couldn't go making stuff up even if you defined it initially.

dusty wrote:Yeah, that was among "the other things".

Yep, I thought that might have been your meaning.