If I ruled the world . . .

There would be much greater use of acronyms without the initial spelling out. After all, don't we pretty much know, for example, what NATO, CIA, FBI, and the UN stand for.

First on my Official List of Acronyms would be AQ. In a quick scan of a new editing project, I have already seen: al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, al Qaida, Al Qaida, al-Qaida, and Al-Qaida.

In case you're wondering, the book was written by one author, not a group of them.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ."

If Ralph Waldo Emerson had been around when I was hiring editors, he'd have been my guy; he got it.

I'm editing a book on professional hockey—seventeen chapters filled with countless references to the NHL and other professional and semi-pro hockey leagues.

I dare say there will not be a single reader who doesn't know what any of the league acronyms stands for.

So I have to remove my full-time job hat—the one that compels me to enforce the acronym rule (spell out first time in each section of a proposal)—and follow common sense. After all, to do otherwise would be detected out there in the space-time continuum and disturb Emerson.

Trifecta

I hit the jackpot yesterday. I did not thank god for this particular Friday, on which all of the following transpired.

Win: The Telecommuting Policy

We’re allowed to work from home one day a week. (My day is Tuesday.) However, when we’re under the gun and a proposal deadline is posted on our Big Board, that policy is suspended. The application of the policy is as clear as mud. To wit:

From one proposal coordinator to staff: “We only have 3 weeks to support this effort. The following weeks will be busy weeks—lots of graphics, DTP, etc. So please do NOT plan on working from home starting next week till due date.” (policy #1)

From the proposal center manager to me (in response to my question, “If no editing takes place next week or the week after, can I work from home on 5/12 and 5/19?”): “If you cannot see how you can help during this time, then you may work from home.” (policy #2)

From our second proposal coordinator to staff: “There’s no working at home the week a proposal is due.” (policy #3)

Place: The Acronym List

One of my responsibilities is to put together a list of acronyms and key terms, extracted from a Request for Proposal as soon as we receive the RFP. The list is a style guide for the proposal writers.

I spent a few hours on Friday doing a list for an upcoming proposal effort. I sent it to the proposal manager for his review/approval.

His response to me: “We will probably not use 50% of the Acronyms on this list in our proposal. . . . Go through our Pink Team folder, through each of the drafts, highlight those we use; we can later delete the rest.” So, first, writing has commenced before anyone asked me to provide an acronym list and, two, the proposal manager (a contractor) has decided that we will abandon our procedure of using the RFP as the basis for the list.

Show: Memory Like a Sieve

The proposal center manager asked me to do a “quick edit” (i.e., one hour) of a 45-page white paper for corporate HQ. First, I already edited it, a couple of weeks ago. Second, I have told her repeatedly that, for obvious reasons, no editor can edit 45 pages in one hour!

Persona non grata V: Sisyphus reporting in

For the current proposal, I developed (based on the Request for Proposal) an extensive list of acronyms and key terms. The list represents the style to be used by the writers.

Among the acronyms are a number that don't need to be spelled out even on first occurrence; they're that well known to the proposal reviewers.

I started editing the proposal today, completing the executive summary and one section of the technical proposal. It took about six hours, at least half of which were devoted to cleaning up the acronym mess—that is, spelling items out the first time they appear. (I bet you're getting tired of reading that. Me too.)

As I was wrapping up my work, I mentioned to the proposal coordinator that the writers had not, despite my list, spelled out many items at all. She told me that the proposal manager had given his writers a list of about twenty acronyms that could stand on their own.

I had to go back through the documents to undo much of my work; for about another hour.

Neither the proposal manager (a contractor) nor the proposal coordinator (a coworker) gave a thought to yours truly—who is responsible for ensuring consistency)—and the fact that his style decisions and list would have an impact on the editing process.

The rock gets heavier and the hill steeper—exponentially every single day.

Neologism

acronymphomania

One entry found.

Main Entry: ac-ro-nym-pho-ma-nia
Pronunciation: \ˌa-krə-nim(p)-fə-ˈmā-nē-ə,-nyə\
Function: noun
Etymology: from Greek akr + New Latin nymphae + Late Latin mania
Date: circa 2009

: excessive desire to use acronyms in one's writing, without ever spelling them out: the condition also can manifest itself in an acronymphomaniac's speech

Acronyms, National Public Radio edition

I just heard an NPR news report relating to the alleged architect of the 9-11 attacks.

After saying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the news reader subsequently referred to him as KSM. I've previously heard this on several news outlets.

What immediately sprang to mind was JFK, and then the classic moment from the 1988 vice-presidential debates between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle. (You know where this is going.)

To borrow from Bentsen's classic zinger at Quayle that evening, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, you're no JFK."

Acronyms: The Bane of My Existence

The most time consuming (that is, by time spent on each page) aspect of proposal editing is ensuring that errors related to acronym usage are corrected. This involves spelling out terms on first usage, looking up those I don’t know, and flagging the rest for the writers. And IT proposals have loads of acronyms.

A while back I summarized, in writing, guidelines for the writers on one particular proposal that explained how to deal with acronyms as they moved ahead with their writing. I gave the guidelines to the proposal coordinator and suggested that she distribute them to every person working on that proposal. Based on their work, either she didn’t provide the guidelines or the writers ignored them.

I’m working on another proposal that is equally horrendous with regard to acronyms. I didn’t bother to ask her if she provided the guidelines to the current group of writers, but I did suggest to her that from now on, every writer on every proposal should receive my guidelines.

It’s like talking to the wall, against which I feel like banging my head.