Why does EVERYTHING have a TLA these days?

[Boy Interrupted]

TLA is a three letter acronym for "Three Letter Acronym." TLAs have spread everywhere. IRS, MSN, CNN, IBM, CPU, ESP, MCI, SSA, URL, BLT, PDA, and on and on and on. Even within the work environment it seems companies have legions of TLAs for employees to know and use. I hate TLAs! :(

[BigMcLargehuge]

1. does ISDN have a TLA? How about HDTV?

LOL....

just teasing.

[bettyellen]

2. as my fwb would say, fu !

just thought i'd come right out with the naughty stuff.

[Boy Interrupted]

3. alright, alright..

they made a mistake and put too many letters in their TLAs. its their fault, not mine

[Merlot]

4. OMG!

when I workd for the airlines it was like we had another language of acronyms. You could not say a sentence without an acronym. Yese, there are the thre-letter city codes, all of wich we had to memorize. Tehre Were names for forms, for functions, for jobs. You name it they had an acronym for it.

Oh, how I miss the days of speaking in abreviations!

[Cuban_Liberal]

8. How he heck did O'Hare become 'ORD'?

That one has aways made me scatch my head, since most (like 'STL' = St. Louis) make sense.

:shrug:

[Boy Interrupted]

9. There are a number or weird ones

Orlando FL MCO
Houston Intercontinental IAH
Portland OR PDX
Knoxville, TN TYX
and of course all the Canadian cities have a Y in front. Why Y?

[Kire]

5. didn't it has something to do with the New Deal

or maybe something to do with World War II?

I've heard that there are a lot less TLA's now than there were then. At least in government.

That's just from memory. I'm no history professor.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. More to do with telegraphs...

and the need to save tapping time. Later, telexes used them to save costs, and typing time. Still later, usenet and instant messaging used them to save time and bandwidth.

Now, we use them the same as jargon-- ony the in crowd knows what they mean.

And to save our thumbs in phone messaging.

[qnr]

6. Communications OPSIGS too, my "qnr" is a case in point.

Though I do disagree with the "everything" bit.