Palen Letter

To the Editor,
Writers used to be cautioned to be careful about forming acronyms with embarrassing or double-entendre meanings.
Now at CMU we have a management software system that calls itself SAP, and a retirement incentive program known as RIP.
The problem isn’t just local, however, An international discipline that I work in, public understanding of science, insists on referring to itself as PUS.
Readers can come up with their own examples, I’m sure.
Let’s try to take the unintentional funniness out of acronyms this year. Or better yet, adopt Associated Press style and eliminate them entirely, except for a short list of widely recognized ones like CIA and FBI.
Most readers don’t know what most acronyms stand for anyway, so using them doesn’t save space, just wastes it.