On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Warlord wrote: #FWIW & IIRC, ATM = Asynchronous Transfer Mode, IMHO. LOL # #Sorry. :) # #It's intruiging, and not a little bit sad, that I have caught myself #speaking/typing a conversation almost exclusively in acronyms. Various #industries have their own language, but the computer field seems to #be especially full of it. And if we are going to be nitpicky, these aren't acronyms, but initialisms. Strictly speaking, an acronym is a word formed from from the beginning parts, especially the initials, of the words of a phrase AND PRONOUNCED AS A WORD. So "NATO" is an acronym but "UN", "FBI", and "CIA" are initialisms. I have heard "ASAP" spoken both ways. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.] #Southerner: "Mornin'. What're y'all up to?" #Northerner: "In the civilized north, we do not end sentences in a #preposition." #Southerner: *thinks* "So, what're y'all up to, asshole?" In Latin you couldn't. In English you can. I agree with the Southerner here.