Note on acronyms and abbreviations

About three weeks ago the BBC News Magazine made me aware of the problem of too many acronyms.

So I just thought I should share a nifty tip and explain a little thing or two about acronyms, abbreviations, and future blog entries.

I usually mark-up all abbreviations and acronyms with proper XHTML. Meaning that they should (though this might not be visible in your Web browser) be marked with a dotted underline. Hover your mouse or pointing device over words styled like this and you will get a tool tips box explaining the word. Test it yourself with these abbreviations:

Mac OS X used to be my primary operating system of course prior to GNU/Linux.

And I will of course do my best to keep the number of abbreviations to a bare minimum!

And since reading the BBC article, I have spent some time figuring out how to solve this issues with media without a pointing device. Such as print and handheld device. Well if you should choose to print an entry from the Website, then it would include abbreviations in embraces behind the abbreviation. It will look something like this:

The DVD [Digital Versatile Disk] sales have doubled since last quarter.

Note that not all Web browsers support this functionality.

I am still working on solving the handheld device's issue with rendering the mark-up, though.

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