Overuse of Acronyms in Professional Writing - Term Paper Example

Overuse of Acronyms in Scientific Writing Introduction As more complex terms are created with advances in science and technology, acronyms have become such a common element in the community of scientists that most scientific journals welcome their use. A scientific article often contains as many acronyms as sentences. The term acronym is widely used to include initialisms. An acronym is formed by combining the first letters of several words and pronouncing the result as a new word, whereas an initialism is also formed by combining the first letters of several words, but pronouncing individual letters. Some acronyms which may be seen in scientific literature include ACE for Angiostensin Coverting Enzyme, BUN for Blood Urea Nitrogen, and CAT for Computerized Axial Tomography. On the other hand, intialisms like ACTH for Adreno-CorticoTrophic Hormone, PTST for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and RT-CR for Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction are also frequently used in the same field. Acronyms are used in the highly technical world for the following purposes: to avoid repetition, to save space, or simplify complex terms. However, acronyms may be overused in scientific writing to the point that the advantages are overshadowed by confusion (Ibrahim 27). This paper will examine the extent by which acronyms are being used in the scientific field with recommendations to prevent the overuse of acronyms in scientific writing Analyzing the Prevalence of Acronyms in Scientific Literature Two studies were conducted to investigate the extent to which acronyms are overused in scientific literature: one by researchers Hong Yu, George Hripcsack, and Carol Friedman at Columbia University, and another by Dr. Everett Shocket, from the University of South Florida and the Bay Pines VA Medical Center. Using a computer program they developed, Yu, Hripcsack, and Friedman mapped acronyms in scientific journals to their respective long forms. Results revealed that only 25% of acronyms were defined in scientific articles. The remaining 75% of undefined acronyms were mapped to one of four online acronym databases. The study found that the acronyms had different meanings in each database (Yu, Hripesack, and Friedman 262). An acronym which stands for various meanings in the same field of expertise is a clear indication of irresponsible use and overuse of acronyms even in scholarly works. Findings of the study suggest that concerns about the prevalence of the overuse of acronyms are founded. The fact that an automated intervention to help readers match an acronym in a scientific journal to its correct long form had not been very successful implies the gravity of the problem on the overuse of acronyms. Dr. Shocket counted uncommon acronyms in 63 of 147 articles published in scientific journals. Results from Dr. Shocket’s study revealed the following: 18% of the articles defined uncommon acronyms in the abstract or first page. 25% of the articles defined uncommon acronyms in the body. 14% of the articles defined uncommon acronyms in the conclusion. Results of the Shocket research amplify the absence of a standard set of rules in dealing with the use of acronyms in scientific literature. Needless say, therefore, that initiatives pertaining to the overuse of acronyms should start with a policy. Dr. Shocket supports the idea of implementing a “no non-standard acronym” policy (meaning no use of uncommon acronyms) in peer and editorial review. Dr. Shocket recommends the following strategies to make it easier for readers to find the definition of acronyms: list acronyms with their corresponding meaning in the first page, or a glossary at the end of the article include the long form of acronyms in footnotes. Defining Acronyms A. M. Ibrahim, a professor at the DeVry Institute of Technology, believes there must be a way to use acronyms in scientific literature without causing confusion. Dr. Alex Scribe, an expert on the APA style of citations and references, recommends defining and highlighting acronyms the first time they are used. Dr. Tsung Cheng, a cardiologist at George Washington University Medical Center, shares the same view on defining acronyms for the following purposes: avoid confusion avert misinterpretation eliminate guesswork prevent aggravation. According to language expert Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, the use of acronyms is acceptable within the same industry as long as there is a well understood frame of reference. Lindsell-Roberts suggests defining acronyms to avoid the risk of insulting or alienating readers (Lindsell-Roberts 351). Compared to Lindsell-Roberts’ position on the use of acronyms, a more conservative view was articulated Virginia Smith-Harvey, a psychologist and scientific writer claims that even if the same industry prefers a common context for an acronym, the purpose of publication is defeated if some readers fail to make a connection because of unfamiliar terminology (Smith-Harvey 271). Unless the acronym is one which readers use frequently, they may focus too much on interpreting the acronym and too little on what the writer is trying to convey. For instance, within the same discipline, use of the acronym TOHMS resulted in confusion when it meant Treatment of Mild Hypertension Study in one research study, but Trials of Hypertensive Medication Study in another study. The gravity of the situation is exemplified by 15 different cardiology studies which had 15 different meanings for the acronym HEART such as: Hastening the Effective Application of Research through Technology HEparin Anticoagulation Regime Treatment Health Education And Research Trial Healing and Early Afterload Reducing Therapy Health Education And Risk Training Health Education Awareness and Resource Team Heart Editors, Action Round Table HEArt failure Revascularization Trial HEART protection study Helping Educators Attack cardiovascular disease Risk factors Together Hyperlipidaemia, Epidemiology, Atherosclerosis, Risk-factor Trial HypErtension and Ambulatory Recording sTudy Hypertrophy at Ecg And its Regression during Treatment Multi-Hospital Eastern Atlantic Restenosis Trial Heart failure Evaluation and Assessment of Risk Trial In this regard, the necessity of defining the acronym the first time it is used is paramount. (Cheng 255, 256). Using Electronic Searches to Find Acronym Long Forms The scientific world can make good use of initiatives to remedy the confusion resulting from the overuse of acronyms by assisting readers of scientific literature in searching for the long forms of acronyms. One promising area is automation. Computer technology seems like a promising avenue for interventions pertaining to the bulk of scientific writing laden with acronyms. The software program, ACROMED, was developed by a group of linguistic and computer experts from Brandeis University, to extract the long form of acronyms from scientific articles stored in Medline’s database. Using the software, writers and readers of scientific literature published electronically can match an undefined acronym to its corresponding long form or meaning. ACROMED’s performance score was 72% for recall and 97% for precision (Pustejovsky, Castano, Cochran, Kotecki, and Morrell 371). In relation to the Medline database, Dr. Carol Frederiuk from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University investigated the effect of 20 common acronyms in Medline searches. Although the database recognized all of the acronyms, the keywords were case- and space-sensitive. It was, therefore, recommended that retrieval of keywords in the database be carried out using three searches: subject with acronym; text word with acronym; and text word with long form acronym (Frederiuk 292). This has important implications for Medline users who are unaware that it is necessary to perform three separate searches to find acronyms. Additionally, Mary Schultz, a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Illinois, examined the subject headings that appeared after acronyms were entered into Medline’s database. Although the search found acronyms in subject headings, it did not find where acronyms were first defined in scientific articles. The study also found that the same acronym had different meanings in different articles. The second finding suggests that scientific writing has already been deluged with so many acronyms and the problem is aggravated by acronyms which have more than one meaning or long form. Hence, it is always important to define an acronym the first time it is used in a study and that automated scripts to search databases for the long form of the acronym should have additional parameters with which searches have to be delimited so that the correct long form is matched to the correct acronym in online searches. Yu, Hripcsack and Friedman developed the software program, Abbreviation Recognition and Extraction (AbbRE) to match acronyms with their long form in scientific literature. AbbRE’s performance score was 70% for recall and 5% for precision. Thus, the program is only efficient for mapping acronyms when the corresponding long form is also included in the program database (Yu, Hripcsack and Friedman 262). Another software program was developed by a group of communications and computer professors from Standford University and University of Edinburgh to recognize acronyms in scientific articles. The program showed difficulties in distinguishing acronyms from common words with the same spelling. The performance score in recall was 70% (Finkel, Dingare, Nguyen, Nissim, manning, and Sinclair 88). Results of this study imply the need for additional programming parameters to distinguish between words in upper case and lower case, since acronyms are usually written in upper case letters. The program may, therefore, modified with this capability to make it more efficient. Unlike the software programs used to search for acronyms in scientific articles, Acrophile is a web server that was developed by the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College, to extract acronyms from online web pages. The performance score in automatic acronym extraction was above average. In effect, Acrophile may be further developed in the future to aid the layperson in deciphering acronyms in scientific articles (Larkey, Ogilvie, Price and Tamilio 205). Cognizant of the mediocre performance of existing electronic applications in monitoring acronyms, it is now up to various scientific associations and journal editors to limit the use of acronyms in scientific literature if it is not practicable to completely eliminate them. Different scientific associations have their own style of formatting in scientific literature, in the same way that the American Psychological Association (APA), Harvard, Chicago, or Modern Language Association (MLA) have their own style of referencing. There should be concerted efforts to standardize the rules of style and formatting, particularly on how scientific journals and related works on how acronyms are to be handled. Conclusion As argued in this paper, acronym usage should be limited in scientific writing. Experts attested to the ways in which acronyms are continuously being overused and how it defeats the purpose of publication. Although these experts condemn the overuse of acronyms, they admit that acronyms are here to stay. It is, therefore, necessary for the scientific community to take action to prevent overuse of acronyms. It was observed from the readings that the absence of a standard set of rules may trigger the overuse of acronyms. In my opinion, a universal set of standard rules should be developed and strictly adhered to by writers, editors, peer reviewers, and everyone else concerned with the publication of scientific literature. The science community cannot tolerate confusion caused by the overuse of acronyms. It may, therefore, be concluded that there is substance in Cheng’s humorous banter about how the overuse of acronyms can be tempered, as he expressed two recommendations in the form of acronyms: CONTROL CRAP- Concentrate On Nixing This Rarely Obvious Lingo, since good Communicators Resist Acronymic Proliferation. Further, the various associations involved in the publication of scientific journals may be the first line of defense against the overuse of acronyms. The following courses of action may be implemented: One scientific association may act as coordinator by contacting representatives from various associations to discuss the problems pertaining to the overuse of acronyms. The website www.omnimedicalsearch.com contains a database of scientific associations grouped by area of expertise. The representatives should create a list of standard rules on acronym usage in scientific literature. All associations should sign an agreement to abide by the agreed standard rules, which should include a provision for an agreed date of effectivity for which the rules will start to be imposed. The following standard rules may be included in the list: avoid non-standard acronyms avoid acronyms in abstracts or titles avoid acronyms with two or more meanings define acronyms during first usage establish a maximum number of acronyms per article Each scientific association should attend a meeting to decide on a list of 10 to 20 of the most common acronyms in their field. The coordinator should prepare the list of acceptable acronyms together with the list of standard rules on acronym usage. The lists should be widely disseminated, preferably on websites of all scientific associations. If the scientific community expects positive results from this cooperative venture, there should be firm resolve to guarantee that all scientific writings are evaluated based on compliance to the standard rules on acronym usage prior to approval for publication, whether online or in print. The urgency of the need for standardized policy requires that a definitive move be made soonest. Works Cited Cheng, Tsung O. “Acronymophilia.” British Medical Journal. 309 (1994): 683-684. Cheng, Tsung O. “Acronyms of Clinical Trials in Cardiology – 1998.” American Heart Journal. 137.4 Part 1 (1999): 726-765. Finkel, Jenny, Shipra Dingare, Huy Nguyen, Malvina Nissim, Christopher Manning, and Gail Sinclair. 2004. Exploiting Context for Biomedical Entity Recognition: From Syntax to the Web. 88-91. 7 June 2009 Fred, Herbert L. and Tsung O. Cheng. “Acronymesis: The Exploding Misuse of Acronyms.” Texas Heart Institute Journal. 20.4 (2003): 255-257. Frederiuk, Carol S. “The Effect of Abbreviations on Medline Searching.” Academic Emergency Medicine. 6.4 (2008): 292-296. Goodman, Neville W. and Martin B. Edwards. 1997. Medical Writing: A Prescription for Clarity. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ibrahim, A. M. “Acronyms Observed.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. 32.1 (1989, 2002 updated): 27-28. Larkey, Leah S., Paul Ogilvie, M. Andrew Price and Brenden Tamilio. “Acrophile: An Automated Acronym Extractor and Server.” Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries. (2000): 205-214. 7 June 2009 Lindsell-Roberts, Sheryl. Strategic Business Letters and E-mail. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Harvey, Virginia Smith. “Improving Readability of Psychological Reports.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. 28.3 (1997): 271-274. Pustejovsky, J., J. Castaño, B. Cochran, M. Kotecki and M. Morrell. “Automatic Extraction of Acronym-meaning Pairs for Medline Databases.” Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. 84 (2001): 371-375. Schultz, Mary. “Mapping of Medical Acronyms and Initialisms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Across Selected Systems.” Journal of Medical Library Association. 94.4 (2006): 410-414. Shocket, Everett. “Frequency of Uncommon Abbreviations in Medical Journals.” Southern Medical Journal. 88.3 (1995): 315-318. Walsh, William F. The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2004. Yu, Hong, George Hripcsack, and Carol Friedman. “Mapping Abbreviations to Full Forms in Biomedical Articles.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 9 (2002): 262-272. Read More