Amongst the black mambas and pythons at the London Zoo-hosted Chameleon Net 10th anniversary bash I suddenly found that I was speaking in tongues.

Well, not tongues exactly, but certainly a strange version of English where all the nouns were replaced by technical acronyms. As a marketer rather than a technologist I try and speak, and write, in plain English whenever possible.  It came as a quite surprise to hear myself speaking fluent web-eze – all ‘CMS’, ‘SEO’, ‘ePR’ ‘PPC’ and ‘CSS’. 

This acronym-laden prose was peppered with strange and evocative concept words, product names and programming languages – ‘The Cloud’, ‘Python’, ‘Black Hat’. Now the recipient of my wisdom was a web developer, rather than a poor unsuspecting member of the public and my use of these acronyms allowed for smooth conversation flow and greater speed in getting our ideas across to one another.

Back in the office we debated our use of acronyms in our marketing and pr communications activity with clients.  Beyond the web, our work with specialists such as accountants and management consultants leads us into yet more acronym territory - MCR, TCR, COP, RSL and CTSA’s. We concluded our rule of thumb is to only use acronyms where we can guarantee that our communication will be received and understood by the target professional group. 

Fowler’s English Usage is, of course, the first port of call when deciding on the correct way to deal with acronyms.  Unfortunately I cannot seem to find an online version (you seem to have to buy it! It’s printed on paper!). However, the strangely named 'Garbl’s Style Manual' at http://home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual offers some rather poetic advice on the subject: “When in doubt, spell it out”.
And if you want to Indulge Yourself with Acronyms (IYA) then go to http://www.acronymfinder.com.