The Australian dictionary of acronyms and abbreviations
Book review
When I volunteered to write a book review on the fifth edition of The Australian Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations by David Jones, I did so in all seriousness as someone who believes an editor can never have too many reference books. And it is a very useful reference comprising 662 pages of acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms. Acronyms are made up of initial letters or parts of words and are usually pronounced as words, such as QANTAS. Abbreviations are abbrev. forms of words, and initialisms are letter sequences that are spelt out, like TNT.All three forms are often the shorthand of specialist areas and anyone working on material emanating from government or quasi government agencies, tertiary administration, branches of science or the like will find this invaluable. These are areas where certain language forms and usage have become, and are in the process of becoming, a working argot that makes for more efficient communications within the working context. A side effect of this specialism is infuriation on the part of outsiders who have to decipher the jargon. Context is everything in interpreting many acronyms or abbreviations, and contexts are given for the more obscure references. For example, DD can stand for Deputy Director, Direct Debit, Discharged Dead or Doctor of Divinity, but it is only a very small and select group who would have picked Double Demy (a paper size) as the meaning (incidentally, DE stands for Double Elephant, another paper size). Certain clusters of acronyms and abbreviations can be seen as markers of occupational dialects. The Dictionary is a handy phrase book for the modern organisational traveller. It must have been a nightmare to typeset and proofread!
My seriousness as a reviewer started to become seriously unstuck, however, at the back-jacket blurb that went 'I found the book enthralling.' The Australian Accountant. Fascinating, useful, interesting, maybe...
Readers, be warned. The book is seriously subversive of the work ethic in offering such inviting distractions to any task in hand as BOLO, or Bilingual Obstetric Liaison Officer - someone who knows how to say Push and Pant in many languages, including Auslan?
Some of the juxtapositions of meanings are startling, too, with DA for Dinner Ale and Diploma in Anaesthesia appearing together. What is it about Police or Customs culture that leads them to call their operatives DDDU (Drug Detector Dog Units) when the rest of us call them sniffer dogs? Here's one name that has been forever ruined for me - DEBRA - now that I know it stands for Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Association of Australasia. It is so comforting to know that the Asia-Pacific Information Network in Social Sciences is all about APINESS.
The Dictionary is up to the minute with Internet Chat Abbreviations (not yet initialised as ICA - that belongs to the Institute of Chartered Accountants, who think this book is enthralling) such as IYKWIMAITYD (if you know what I mean and I think you do), international affairs, with FYROM standing for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, although it is sad that none of the other components of the former Yugoslavia rate an entry. This exemplifies one of the book's only flaws for me - it has no guide to pronunciation. For many of the entries, I was unsure whether they were acronyms or initialisms - is it Fie-Rom, or Eff Why Arr Oh Em for the bit that was Macedonia?
Some are fairly obscure, with the acronym being harder to remember or write than the actual phrase it is trying to replace, as in UUIWCTAUTC, which stands for 'unless used in which case time actually used to count'. One might suggest that a good editor could have saved a lot of heartburn in this instance by recasting whatever it is that the phrase is meant to mean in the first place. And finally, who could possibly have faith in the Treasury Wholesale Sales Tax, Excise, Revenue and Price Model with an acronym like TWERP?
The book is to be recommended, then - as a serious reference for the editor and as a delightful toy in which to bob for the absurd. Maybe the description of 'enthralling' was accurate after all.
The book is The Australian Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations, 5th edition, by David J Jones, and published by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), 2000. ALIA are also the distributors. Price is $66 plus $16.50 p & p (work that one out!).
Holly McCausland
