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Assume v. Presume

Depends on the context. A good example is the people no longer using HD for a hard drive to avoid confusion with High Definition when talking about AV equipment including recorders. Instead HDD is now the customary acronym (for hard disk drive). Away from the world of AV you are still likely to see HD used.
 
raydon said:
I think you have completely missed the point. We are talking here about acronyms, not the full description.
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Looking back up the thread it seems to me the discussion is around a short description for a Universal Serial Bus Flash Memory Device in a Thumb Size Enclosure. A couple of the posited solutions are acronyms but several people have played with other other possibilities.

And you were one of those to 'Like' my post that more or less ended with "I'd go with USB stick." :confused:

Anyways, back to Trev's spoiling the stakes ...
 
MikeSh said:
Looking back up the thread it seems to me the discussion is around a short description for a Universal Serial Bus Flash Memory Device in a Thumb Size Enclosure. A couple of the posited solutions are acronyms but several people have played with other other possibilities.

And you were one of those to 'Like' my post that more or less ended with "I'd go with USB stick." :confused:

Anyways, back to Trev's spoiling the stakes ...
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The discussion started because of Black Hole's use of the acronym UPD to refer to a USB stick in this thread, about which Ezra Pound commented in post #1148 here. I 'liked' your post which followed Ezra's simply because I too preferred USB stick to the lesser known UPD, about which the OP in the other thread had to seek clarification.
 
Not at all. This discussion started when I queried the Wiki "author's" inconsistent use of "WiKi" and "Wi-Ki", in a request he decides which it should be and sticks to it (or preferably bows to convention and uses "wiki"). The issue of UPD was thrown up as a deliberate smoke screen, and besides I have a solution which I will be rolling out shortly.

I am not at all impressed with the posturing; various acronyms (or, correctly, initialisms) would be unfamiliar and need looking up (eg DLNA, HDCP) and some would be difficult to Google (eg OTA). "USB stick" is no more universal than any of the other character strings used by various authors and manufacturers to describe the same basic item, and I see no reason the vociferous few should be accepted as arbiters any more than the silent majority who appear unphased. I would be far more willing to enter into reasoned debate with somebody I regard as a peer on this subject (technical authoring), eg Fenlander.

Meanwhile, at least two of the anti-UPD movement need to look to their own houses before casting rocks in my direction. I have yet to ascertain what the dots in "O.K." are meant to be place-holders for, and if they are going to put dots into some initialisms/abbreviations, why not be consistent and use them in all abbreviations ("D.L.N.A.", "R.A.D.A.R." etc)? There should be a few red faces.

You know who you are: shape up; or if you are not going to shape up then you have no moral high ground from which to criticise.
 
and some would be difficult to Google (eg OTA).
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The first hit for OTA is Over The Air. Which is its normal context used here.
The first hit for USB Stick leads to exactly what we are talking about.
There is only one red herring for DNLA.
The first hit on HDCP tells you exactly what it is.
However if you Google UPD, its difficult to find the meaning in the context used here. Even the well known Wikipedia does not list it.
Oh and should not eg be e.g.?:)
 
My experience from the many customer sites I have visited over the years is that "USB stick" is used pretty much universally. Of course, these will have mostly been IT support people so it's a skewed sample. I've heard "Flash drive" too but I don't think any of them would have understood UPD!

However, USB stick is ambiguous and, as long as it's expanded on first use, I don't see a problem with UPD in technical documentation like BH's "What every user..." thread. I don't think it should be used in general forum posts without an expansion or some other clue to the reader though.

Radar started as an acronym but has become a word in its own right. IMHO that just means that it can be pronounced instead of sounded out. Punctuation between the individual letters of an acronym is generally omitted these days as the presence of all-capital letters is sufficient to indicate that the word is an abbreviation (let's not start talking about pluralisation of acronyms!). e.g. is an abbreviation rather than an acronym and I would include the dots there.
 
No, as BH says, and acronym is a pronounceable word made up from initial letters from other words. Radar as you undoubtedly know is from "RAdio Detection And Ranging" and is a pronounceable word. It's not easy to pronounce "HDMI" , "USB", "IMHO" etc. If you put punctuation marks between the letters of an acronym, then it is no longer an acronym because it can't be pronounced.
e.g. is an abbreviation rather than an acronym and I would include the dots there.
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So why would you not put the dots between the letters of the initialism IMHO?
 
... which presumably makes HDMI an initialism rather than an acronym? I hadn't come across the 'pronounceable' condition before.

RADAR started life as an acronym but is now listed as a common noun in the two dictionaries I have to hand and has lost all capitalisation in general use as a result.
 
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