OpinionsThe Way It IsAcronyms and unnecessaries

Acronyms and unnecessaries

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have a hard time reading the local papers nowadays because virtually every other word is an acronym.

Of course, preceding the bracketed acronym is the spelled-out word that it stands for, but still, they become a nuisance when there are just too many of them.

Sometimes, there may be as many as five acronyms in one sentence. Reading articles peppered with too many acronyms becomes laborious for me. I have a feeling, though, that it might be just as laborious for other readers.

About twice a week, we go to the grocery store to buy food essentials. Some of the grocery stores we go to have little newsstands that sell newspapers and some magazines.

I visit the newsstands, often buying one of each newspaper, not that the news may be different between them, but because I like to find how differently they are presented.

But that’s just the writer in me.

Some news articles differ in the way they are written, but that’s about all that’s different about them.

And then there are those articles that are just loaded to the brim with acronyms. Those are the articles where it seems the writer could not effectively compose without over-using initialism.

Those are the articles that even when read silently, does not encourage fluidity.

Those pesky acronyms are like stumbling blocks that trip the mind and the tongue repeatedly throughout the article.

Having a little experience in newscasting, I would say that they wouldn’t make good broadcast copy. Then again, these writers are writing for print, and when writing for print media, expansions and acronyms in almost every sentence make for complicated reading.

Also, the local papers are simply too obsessed with enumerating every government office, government official and their assistants, every kind of weapon (including caliber and brand), every sachet of something (with unit of measure every time it is mentioned), the place and the barangay captain of the village mentioned, every round of ammunition and its caliber, that sometimes the sentences become too long.

In the haste to make the deadline, some news articles are no longer edited, even for typos. The writer no longer has the time to read the article out loud, which is a good way to find errors, including spelling errors.

The fluidity is lost in the haste. I say haste, because I have read too many articles where a sentence starts out with one thought, and ends with another.

In a news article, a short sentence carrying one thought is better than a long one punctuated to death to carry several.

It seems, importance is heavily-placed on pleasing the newsmakers rather than the readers.

Those are simply observations that I have made on the side, while I was detesting the overuse of acronyms.

I have come across a written work that relied heavily on acronyms, and I enjoyed reading it for its ridiculousness. I even shared it on Facebook.

But the whole thing was a joke, and that exempted the writer from all formal conventions.

However, in a newspaper, I think people look for impeccable writing that shows respect for the reader. After all, the reader buys the newspaper, and deserves a comfortable, informative, and easy-reading experience.

A copy chock-full of errors is like throwing leftovers for others to eat. Where’s the respect in that? Where’s the professionalism?

The more dire our social condition becomes, as the present viral scare has caused, the more there is a need for people to be informed.

I think that reporters should do their best to present information like any other consumer-ready product–researched, proved, and the wrinkles ironed out.

It used to be like that with all the newspapers here. What happened?

It is necessary to keep the public informed, and that’s the job of the newspapers and the radio/TV stations. They have one thing in common–they all have writers who compose the news into its most concise form, while preserving the information, highlighting its significance, and presenting it to the readers or listeners in a manner that captures their interest.

I don’t believe that the way it is now cannot be changed to the way it used to be.

All it would take is for the writer to play the reader or listener of the news sometimes, rather than play the writer all the time.

A manufacturer who uses his own product knows what his consumers want.

_____________________________

Author’s email: [email protected]

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