this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
362 points (96.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43393 readers
1469 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
POS I find very funny as I'm often working on Point-of-Sale equipment, and most of it is running Poorly Optimized Software, making the whole thing a Piece of Shit for the users.
Not an acronym though, but an initialism. Acronyms are said like a word, like CRISPR, initialisms arenβt, like ATM.
you're being pointlessly pedantic. Initialisms are also considered acronyms by most defimitions and by common use.
I don't think they're being pointlessly pedantic. I've been around POS systems and some people call it by the letters, P.O.S. & others by the acronym, sounding like "pause". Nobody assumes you're talking about a Piece of Shit when you say "pause". Also for OOO ("oooh") vs O.O.O., which doesn't roll off the tongue, but you don't sound like Casper.
Now, being pointlessly pedantic, I find it interesting to think that if we continue to use the word acronym for initialisms, then the word acronym will actually be initialisms! English is weird!
Yeah when you say βpauseβ they assume youβre referring to a position.
im not saying theres no difference between pronouncing each lettwer and pronouncing the whole thing like a word, just that both are generally considered acronymns so the correction was unnecessary.
Oh shit. TIL. Also, I guess TIL is not an acronym then lol.
Speaking of ATM, am I the only one that defaults this to "ass to mouth", before realizing they mean asynchronous transaction machine?
Automated Teller
Ah yes this is the one
Automated Teller Machine
Hmmm, interesting. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say "TIL" out loud. When I read it, I say it as an acronym ("till") in my head, but I think if I ever said it out loud, I'd probably go with the initialism ("tee-eye-ell"). All that to say, maybe it's both?
I always pronounce all initialisms as words if even close to possible. I don't care whether or not they were meant to. Till, fuhtfy, fuhmmuhl, wuhtf, and so on. Some I understand why others might say as individual letters, but others I have no clue because it doesn't make sense to me at all. Why would you ever say double-u tee eff, which is two syllables longer than the actual words?
I always read ATM like that
literally no one cares.
I used to get a kick out of that at my super market because the brand of machine was "RealPOS" adding one more thing to poke fun at.
For years I had no idea Point of Sale was a thing, and always thought people were talking about systems they hated as pieces of shit.
Kinda like a TPS report.
I'll get you a copy of that memo