Air University Review, May-June 1968
Major General Thomas G. Corbin
SIR HARRY LAURER once said the ability to hold an audience must be a gift, or no Scotsman would ever possess it.
This treatise holds out no promise of such a prize, through it does hope to illuminate certain pitfalls that must be circumvented to preclude losing an audience. Neither is this a pedantic diatribe against present military methods of communicating. Rather, it is a small cry, from a growing wilderness of misunderstanding and misinterpretation, protesting a practice both insidious and deceptive.
The proliferation of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials in the propagation of military information has risen to mind-boggling proportions. The transfer of information is now made over a communications bridge whose foundations rest not on a bedrock of knowledge but upon a precipitous alphabetic conglomerate. The seriousness of this problem is not fully appreciated. Indeed, the official Air Force guide for making oral presentations (Air Force Pamphlet 178-1-1) considers it worthy of only a cursory examination.
There has probably never been such fertile creation and widespread use of these fuzzy ghost of words as at present. Cryptic designations, contorted abbreviations, and eclectic initials have permeated the language of government, research, and business since the beginning of World War II, largely as a by-product of the information explosion in science and technology.
The most insidious of these forms is the acronym. An acronym (from ACRO—meaning extreme, plus NYM—meaning name) is a word (or nonword, but pronounceable) made up of initials or syllables from a group of words (Moose—from Man-Out-Of-Space-Easiest, an emergency space escape system) or of the first and last syllables of a group of words (MOTEL –from Motor and hotel). Many have become widely known and accepted as words in their own right and are common coin of the realm (RADAR—from Radio Detecting And Ranging).
The United States has not been alone in this convolution of language. Look to the early twenties and we find the Soviets running amuck with such tongue twisters as AMTORG, GOSPLAN, and AGITPROP. If it seems we have been surpassed in this arena of non-communication, worry no more, for we have closed the abcedarian gap. Consider: AFAUD—the readily recognizable Air Force AUDiter General, or AFJKT—known to all as the Air Force Job Knowledge Test, or the truly imposing DEFREPNAMA—for DEFense REPresentative North Atlantic and Mediterranean Area.
There seems to have been little or no order in the creation of many such terms. Some of those in use today were obviously selected (after being squeezed, elongated, and diabolically tortured) for the resultant acronym (CARE—Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, ACTION—American Council To Improve Our Neighborhoods). Some have a logical basis, and some do not. Some are borrowed words, some are nicknames; others are alphanumeric, and still others are a combination of these schemes.
The torrent of initials to designate governmental agencies and procedures has inundated us with alphabet soup: SAC, TAC, TAWC, TARC, MAC, OSD, AFPR, AFATL, APRFE, APGc—and on ad infinitum. The miscellany ranges from the sublime (HALO—High Altitude Low Opening) to the ludicrous (APc—All Purpose Capsule).
At times, these terse, descriptive, and (sometimes) easily remembered terms have without question become useful in the language as a means of referring to complex, multiworded concepts, projects, or hardware. (Confusing sometimes also. Remember the lieutenant who asked his crew chief why his aircraft was being sent overseas to IRAN—Inspection and Repair As Necessary.)
As each of our specialized disciplines grew in complexity, so too did the locutions necessary to describe them. As new heights were reached in reducing complicated data to more manageable units, understanding correspondingly reached new lows. What had begun as a shortcut to understanding has become a detour around comprehension.
Recently, at one of our Southern bases (best that it remain nameless), General--and a group of senior officers were scheduled to be briefed on the mission of a particular unit. Despite meticulous preparation, disaster struck. What went wrong? Shortly after beginning his presentation, the briefing officer resorted to the use of acronyms and initials in explaining a point. Lapsing into parochial jargon appears to be in vogue these days. There are those who will accept it without question, either through stupor or as a display of supercilious sophistication. This day, General--was seeking specific detailed information. He questioned the briefer as to the exact meaning of an acronym he had used. The officer's answer was deemed in error and was immediately corrected by the operations officer of the unit, whereupon the unit commander further corrected both. This exchange brought forth the hasty departure of General--. His parting shot to the unit commander still rings in the ears of those present: “Call me when you know what the hell you're talking about!”
An experience of this sort is reason enough to develop habits of semantic clarity, for clarity is the handmaiden of understanding. Remember, the use of a familiar word has a greater impact than a strange one. Anatole France, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, said, “The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if they cannot be understood.” Will Rogers also saw this. He said, “I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you.”
My objective is not to place a yoke on creative expression but to free it from the tethers of constrictive contractions. Let us not be drugged by this poison that is more dangerous than opium or hashish--a poison that stifles understanding and retards comprehension. We are becoming addicted to the unfettered use of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials, without explanation, in our communications.
With Air Force Manual 11-2 listing more than 2500 authorized abbreviations and acronyms (approximately the number of words in a first grader's speaking vocabulary) plus other thousands of parochial unauthorized ones, it seems time to call for a change. Let comprehension, not expediency, shape our course.
Far from calling for a departure from tradition, I suggest a return to the inspiring example of past masters of language: Moses found it unnecessary to refer to the Ten Commandments as the “TENCOMS”; Lincoln completed his Gettysburg Address handily without resorting to acronyms; Hannibal explained his conception of the Battle of Cannae to his lieutenants without once referring to his foes as the ROAR (ROman ARmy).
I fear we are forgetting how to speak English. The time is fast approaching when meaningful communication will be difficult, if not impossible, unless measures are taken to restore clarity to our working vocabulary. Let us descend from our Tower of Babble and begin ASAP!
Eglin Air Force Base, Florida
Major General Thomas G. Corbin (USMA) is Commander, USAF Special Air Warfare Center, Eglin AFB, Florida. He completed pilot training in 1942 and served in the European Theater 1943-45 as Deputy Commander, later Commander, 386th bomb Group (B-26). Postwar assignments have been as Air Inspector, Hq Air Training Command; Commander, 91st Air Base Group, McGuire AFB, New Jersey; student, RAF Staff College, Bracknell, then air base commander at RAF Sculthorpe and Brize Norton; Provost Marshal, Hq Strategic Air Command; Deputy Commander, 1st Air Division, SAC; student, National War College; Commander, 4060th Air Refueling Wing, Dow AFB, Maine; Commander, 818th Strategic Aerospace Division, Lincoln AFB, Nebraska; and Deputy Director, then Director, Legislative Liaison, OSAF, preceding his present assignment in 1966.
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