Three letter acronyms (TLAs) are all over the corporate world; it would take an anthropologist (or perhaps a historical linguist) to track their evolution and speciation in the diverse niches of the organizational landscape. One could argue that they are of benefit in reducing writing and reading time (and the destruction of rainforest); on the other hand, a large company has so many acronyms that a dictionary is required (and in some companies, provided) to keep track of their meanings, which tend to be quite complex, and of their origins, which may be almost forgotten. I sometimes spend an idle moment in the middle of a boring meeting by imagining what Isaac Newton, or William Shakespeare, would make of the acronym-laden slides being presented: they would be quite a mystery to them!

And so, I was delighted when, while  visiting a technology company recently, I saw posters on the walls that described some product plans and the like. Each poster had a legend at the bottom which gave the expansion of every acronym it used into English (some perhaps still unintelligible to the eternal bard, but certainly understandable by an outsider).

Let clarity reign!