Abbreviations and Acronyms

I ran into a Sentence in Scientific American that caught my attention because it contains a new word, sort of. It’s an acronym, GLOF, but you pronounce it like a word. Here’s the sentence:

GLOFs have wrecked havoc in the past.

Of course, the article defined the term as glacial lake outburst flood, referring to when a lake in a stream fed by a glacier bursts its downstream dam and floods the valley below. As glaciers melt faster, the streams get bigger and sometimes overwhelm their watercourses. But that’s not what this post is about.

Acronym rules of thumb:

• Acronyms stand for more than one word, abbreviations are shortened versions of single words.
• Acronyms usually have periods if you pronounce each letter separately. (He works for the S.E.C.) But see the last bullet…
• If it’s an acronym, don’t put spaces between the letters.
• Don’t use periods if you pronounce the acronym as a word. (I’m a fan of NASA)
• If the acronym is common enough, you can leave off the periods even though you still say the letters. (I live in the USA.)
• Don’t use periods if the acronym uses more than just the initial letters. These usually get treated as words anyway—the extra letters are to make it pronounceable. (This army guy works for COMSEC.)
• The language is moving in the direction of eliminating the periods even if the acronym isn’t particularly common.

PS (Postscript): That quoted sentence contains a solecism. The word shouldn’t be “wrecked,” it should be “wreaked.” Look it up.