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Thanks. I don’t know why people use obscure abbreviations and acronyms.
by tchalla 10mo ago
Thanks. I don’t know why people use obscure abbreviations and acronyms.
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoThey think it makes them sound knowledgable.
- andruby 10mo agoI don't think that is necessarily the case. If you use certain words all the time, shortening them makes sense. They might just forget which abbreviations are and aren't common knowledge. You wouldn't get mad if people use PC, CPU, ATM and RAM, right? Even SSD would be fine on HN, but it probably wouldn't be fine outside HN. (neither would using "HN")
- alberto_ol 10mo agoWithout context ATM could be Asynchronous Transfer Mode or automated teller machine.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- sowbug 10mo agoAt the moment
- codeflo 10mo ago> Even SSD would be fine on HN, but it probably wouldn't be fine outside HN. The set of people who know the term "solid state drive" is likely a strict subset of the people (mostly tech enthusiasts of some shape) who know "SSD". Same for "USB" and many other terms that have entered the mainstream primarily as an abbreviation. So the question is not whether to use an abbreviation or spell out the full term as a matter of principle; the question is whether it's the abbreviation or the full term that's more commonly known. I'd argue that way fewer people recognize "CTA" than know the term "call to action". I personally have done some front-end development, and didn't know the abbreviation either.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Izkata 10mo agoAnd "ATM machine" tells me most people think the acronym is the name instead of an acronym.
- venturecruelty 10mo ago[flagged]
- kunley 10mo agoTo be exact, it takes more time than 0.3s to type it, even for a fast typer. I don't know why people can't not exaggerate things? Doing it is certainly making their message less reliable, not more
- ryanjshaw 10mo agoI googled it and it was defined as a marketing term, so I figured that can’t be the right one in a comment about freedom of speech.
- nmz 10mo agoIt stands for "Chicago transit authority". I don't know about you, but search engines have become useless since last year, I'm talking downright unusable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTA
- stockresearcher 10mo agoThe Chicago Transit Authority has existed for only about 70 years despite transit in Chicago being around for 125+ years. Legislation the governor signed last week all but guarantees that it won’t see its hundredth birthday except possibly as a sticker on the side of the busses and trains. Within 5 years the agency will only have the duty to plan routes within the city limits, and maybe do some of the driver hiring.
- MarkusQ 10mo agoA search engine can tell you what some people mean by the acronym. It can't tell you what this particular author meant. It's like asking an LLM where you left your car keys, or asking Google what your spouse wants for dinner.
- venturecruelty 10mo ago
- venturecruelty 10mo agoNo, they're just not pandering to children who can't help themselves.
- matsz 10mo agoArguably CTA isn't exactly an obscure acronym. It's multi-disciplinary - quite common in UI/UX design and marketing; and also decently common in any branched of software engineering that interact with these topics, like... web development.
- knorker 10mo agoI've worked in software engineering on Internet things for decades and I have not once heard or seen this abbreviated before.
- crossroadsguy 10mo agoCTA is very obscure. As a mobile dev I refuse to call CTA as anything other than click or tap to action in which case it should be TPA. Also many folks (esp. PMs confuse CTAs with button clicks). Anyway, CTA in this context didn’t even ring a distant bell either for call or click and I am glad it didn’t.
- Vinnl 10mo agoI think in UI design it usually is intended to refer to the main thing you want/expect a user to do in any given situation, i.e. having multiple CTAs is a bit of an oxymoron while having multiple buttons is not.
- rconti 10mo agoWait, the acronym for "Tap To Action" is "TPA"?
- crossroadsguy 10mo agoNah, I meant to type TTA but now that I have mistyped TPA I should make that Tap Pour Action - Tap for Action (I am not trying the double meaning here, just to clarify).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
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- venturecruelty 10mo ago[flagged]
- knorker 10mo agoThey could also write the comment in French, and by the same argument people should need to go out of their way to copy-paste that into google translate. Thousands of people are going to read this thing. The writer could spare thousands of people spending tens of seconds (totaling days of human life), by simply spending less than a second spelling out the obscure term.
- fragmede 10mo agoWho's going all the way to Google translate to copy and paste? You just select the text and right click/long press and select translate.
- knorker 10mo agoI'm not sure what you are attempting to add by being pedantic while not affecting the conclusion in any what whatsoever.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoBoy are you going to be surprised when you find out that there is an entire French literary tradition that doesn't concern itself with who does and does not speak the language.
- knorker 10mo agoIs this some snarky reddit comment? Yeah, there are literally billions of people in the world who don't speak English. And yet HN is de facto English. Do you see many people commenting on HN in French? How's that working out for them? Are they succeeding or failing to communicate? It seems that people are, for the most part, succeeding in tailoring their message for their audience.
- SapporoChris 10mo agoThere is absolutely no issue with using obscure abbreviations or acronyms as long as it is defined in the first use.
- nervysnail 10mo agoIA (I agree).
- Imustaskforhelp 10mo agoIAOTM (I approve of this message)
- jhbadger 10mo agoIn scientific papers (where acronyms are common) this is definitely the rule.
- sowbug 10mo agoThe one that sticks in my craw is "ofc," especially when it's buried in a wall of text written by someone evidently capable of typing lots of characters in one sitting. I have deduced that it means "of course," but of course since that expression could of course be sprinkled almost anywhere in a sentence without changing its meaning much, it's of course hard to be sure.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoI really don't know why people refuse to look things up. And I don't understand how the parent's comment isn't off-topic and unnecessary and pedantic and mine apparently is. This place is a goddamn cesspool.