The acronyms and abbreviations tags

Question

At the risk of sounding overly pedantic and drawing attention to my own failings…

“Acronyms” are defined as:

words formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as they are spelled, not as separate letters.

Examples include “laser”, “scuba” and “NATO”.

“Initialisms” are defined as:

abbreviations which consist of the initial (i.e. first) letters of words and which are pronounced as separate letters when they are spoken.

Examples include “BBC” and “CD”.

To add to the fun, we also have “contractions”, which are defined as:

a type of abbreviation in which letters from the middle of the word are omitted.

(such as “Dr” or “Mr”) and “shortenings”, which are defined as:

abbreviations in which the beginning or end of the word has been dropped.

(such as “rhino” or “cello”).

These are all sub-categories of abbreviations, but in the TeX world many of us seem to be using “acronym” as a synonym for “abbreviation”. This isn't helped by packages such as glossaries — mea culpa. (As a writer whose first language is English, I hang my head in shame.) I've tried to address this with glossaries-extra, which treats acronyms as specific types of abbreviations.

This misuse of the term actually dates as far back as LaTeX 2.09, and I suspect this is like the guillemet/guillemot issue that once established is hard to rectify, but given how pedantic we can be about typesetting and the use of semantically correct commands I think we ought to exercise some pedantry with our tags.

The acronyms tag is currently defined as

{acronyms} is about formatting acronyms and abbreviations using customized commands or specific packages like acronym or {glossaries}.

The abbreviations tag is currently just a synonym for acronyms.

Should we make abbreviations as the main tag for general abbreviations with acronyms redirecting to abbreviations?

Suggested description:

{abbreviations} is about formatting abbreviations (such as acronyms or initialisms) using customized commands or specific packages like acronym, acro or {glossaries}.

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Alice and Bob Scenario 1

Alice asks a question with a MWE that contains

blah \textsc{abc} blah

Bob: btw don't use \textsc, define \newcommand{\acronym}[1]{\textsc{#1}} and use \acronym{abc}

Alice: it's an initialism not an acronym.

Bob: "acronym" is a commonly-used term.

Alice: I commonly see people use \textsc so why can't I?

Bob: That's different.

Heated argumentdiscussion ensues.

Alice and Bob Scenario 2

Alice asks a question with a MWE that contains

blah \textsc{abc} blah

Bob: btw don't use \textsc, define \newcommand{\acronym}[1]{\textsc{#1}} and use \acronym{abc}

Alice: it's an initialism not an acronym.

Bob: yes, see acronyms and abbreviations. Use \initialism instead.

LaTeX conversation resumes.

Answer 1

I do not think that distinction of acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms is useful from the point of view of LaTeX typesetting. Therefore, I think that one tag is sufficient to cover all these linguistic phenomena.

I doubt it is important which of acronyms and abbreviations is the "master" and which is the "slave", and I would leave it be as is. The tag excerpt is clearly mentioning both notions, so if someone is confused, it is not due to the system being wrong.