squareCircleZ

I was staggered in my first months in Singapore. Almost everything becomes an acronym.

On the first day in my job here, I had to try to figure what everyone was talking about, as the following flowed easily:

• PIE (Pan Island Expressway)
• ECE (Electronics and Computer Engineering)
• AET (Academic Excellence Team)
• HDB (Housing Development Board)
• ERP (Electronic Road Pricing)
• MRT (Mass Rapid transit)
• PAP (People’s Action Party)

And there were many more.

You will notice that all the examples above share an important characteristic. They are all TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)…

These days, I try to convince writers to avoid acronyms. They are a severe impediment to understanding.

Today was a classic case. The acronym “DIQ” was in an email to me on discipline issues. I asked a few people what “DIQ” was and no-one seemed to know. I asked the author of the email and she replied “Discipline Inquiry”. Go figure.

Footnote 1: There’s a lot of good stuff in TalkingCock by Colin Goh. Here’s their delightful take on Singapore acronyms.

Footnote 2: Wak - I used 2 TLAs in the heading for this post. It’s getting to me…

Footnote 3: My favourite Singapore acronym is “BGR”. This is a particularly relevant problem for angst-ridden teenagers. It stands for “boy girl relations”.