Acronym Finder Helps Navigate Modern Language

By: Charles Bowen I don't think we've always been enamored of acronyms. I can remember as a kid in the '50s roaring over Mad Magazine's terribly sophisticated (well, it seemed so at the time) spoof of government and corporate America's love affair with alphabet soup.

But I can't imagine movers and shakers of the past being in such a hurry that they didn't have time to spell out what they wanted. I'm trying right now to picture Gen. Lee saying to Gen. Longstreet, "Tell Pickett to bring those boys up ASAP." Nope. It's just not coming into focus for me.

But there's no question that acronyms -- those pronounceable words formed from each of the first letters of a descriptive phrase -- are fundamental to 21st century communication. And they are the ultimate "in" language, right up there with slang and the latest profanity. These days, you need acronym translators to talk with some branches of government and business. And by way of the Web, you have several good ones.

The latest I've found has more than a quarter of a million acronyms on file with definitions. If you printed them all out with 60 lines to a page ... well, don't do that. It would take almost 5,000 sheets of paper. No wonder the site gets literally tens of thousands of visitors a day. If you'd like to check in, visit the site at http://www.acronymfinder.com, and type in the acronym you're wondering about (such as "ASAP") in either upper or lowercase letters. Don't use periods after the letters in the search string ("ASAP" not "A.S.A.P."), unless the acronym actually contains a period (as in "X.500"). Also, don't use single or double quotes, as they will be ignored by the database.

When you submit your search, the most common usage is at the top list, but it doesn't stop there. For "ASAP," for instance, it finds 66 definitions, starting of course with "as soon as possible," but continuing through the Dilbert comic strip's "a stupid-acting person" as well as "academic strategic alliances program," "after-school assistance program," and dozens more.

You also can search for acronyms that:

* Start with a specific text string. From the Options drop-down menu on the introductory page, select the "acronym begins with" option, then enter letters. For instance, enter "AFR" to retrieve acronyms such as "AFRA," "AFRC," "AFREP," and so on.

* Contain a search string of letters. From the Options drop-down menu, select the "acronym (wildcard)" option, then enter letters. This time if you enter "AFR," the site returns "AFR" and "AFRT," but also "MAFR" and other acronyms in which those three letters in that sequence are contained.

Other considerations for using Acronym Finder in your writing and editing:

1. In searching for acronyms, avoid any of the following characters in the search string: @, #, $, %, ^, + and ?.

2. It's also important to remember what Acronym Finder isn't -- it's not a glossary of terms, Web search engine, dictionary, or thesaurus. However, in the "About Acronym Finder" section of the site (reached from the navigation bar at the top of any page), the site recommends some of its favorite online glossaries and word finders.

3. If you write about the site in your news columns or Internet features, you might want to mention its "Fun Stuff!" section, where, among other things, you can find general buzzwords, using Philip Broughton's "Systematic Buzz Phrase Projector."
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