Sir, – Michael Keegan (Letters, December 10th) prompts me to write about the misuse of the term acronym.
An acronym is an abbreviation of first letters that can be spoken as a word, NASA and NATO are obvious examples.
If it’s not possible to say the letters in a single word, eg RTÉ, it is an initialism rather than an acronym.
However logic and consistency play no part in all of this. For example, the teachers’ union INTO is never pronounced as an acronym, even though it could be said as such, but is always expressed in four separate letters as an initialism.
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– Yours, etc,
PAVEL MARIANSKI,
Dungarvan,
Co Waterford.