May I humbly participate to this very interesting IETF-related discussion with the following contribution : - an abbreviation is a part of a (normally long) word ; e.g.: dino for dinosaur, photo for photograph, pls for please, pop for popular, thx for thanks. - an acronym is a word composed of initials ; e.g.: ASAP, LASER, NATO, OSI, RADAR, SCUBA, are well-known acronyms. They sound like words, while they are actually groups of initials. - initials are the first letters of words ; e.g.: IETF, CIA, FBI, IBM, RFC, TCP, are well-known initials, too complex to be used as acronyms. - a mnemonic is any possible trick to remember... something ; e.g.: "All People Seem To Need Data Processing", to remember A-P-S-T-N-D-P, to remember the sequence of OSI layers : Application-Presentation-Session-Transport-Network-Data Link-Physical). Note that some can belong to different categories : SCSI can be seen as/pronounced "S.C.S.I." or "SCUSI", SQL can be seen as/pronounced "S.Q.L." or "Sequel" ; they can be both used as initials or acronyms! There can also be hybrids, like this very interesting one : ISOC (for Internet Society) is a mix of an abbreviation (SOC for Society), an acronym (ISOC is a word based on an initial "I" and an abbreviation "SOC"), an initial (I for Internet), and a mnemonic (ISOC is better and easier to identify/remember than IS or I.S.). Hope this helped in increasing the confusion ;b ___________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com