Grammar fascinates me, as does anything else that gives science and structure to seemingly non-quantifiable things like literature and art. English grammar is especially interesting. Because of the various origins of the language there are hardly any set-in-stone-rules regarding spelling and sentence structure. So grammaticians come along and try to build a decent language structure from this debris of Greek and Latin. And they have come up with some pretty cool things.
An acronym for instance, is different that an initialism. They are both the collective first letters of a phrase or title. However, while you can pronounce an acronym like "NASA" and "LASER" you can't pronounce an initialism, like "CNN". (The abbreviation of Al Sahwa Schools should by nature be an initialism).
Acronyms and initialisms are when we turn sentences into words. What about the other way round? Well, that's called a backronym. No joke. SOS, for example doesn't actually stand for anything. But is often taken to mean "Save Our Souls", "Save Our Ship" or "Someone Over Shoulder".
And speaking of jokes, a while back a few people tried turning sarcasm into a part of speech. They proposed the use of a "percontation point", a reversed question mark, at the end of a sentence that is meant to have a hidden or sarcastic notion. Thankfully this was never implemented and a majority of the world is still in the dark regarding half of written literature. Can you imagine having to point out every tongue-in-cheek remark and satirical statement to the general public? Yikes. I will however, start using a reversed question mark on social media sites when I don't want what I'm saying to be taken seriously.
An acronym for instance, is different that an initialism. They are both the collective first letters of a phrase or title. However, while you can pronounce an acronym like "NASA" and "LASER" you can't pronounce an initialism, like "CNN". (The abbreviation of Al Sahwa Schools should by nature be an initialism).
Acronyms and initialisms are when we turn sentences into words. What about the other way round? Well, that's called a backronym. No joke. SOS, for example doesn't actually stand for anything. But is often taken to mean "Save Our Souls", "Save Our Ship" or "Someone Over Shoulder".
And speaking of jokes, a while back a few people tried turning sarcasm into a part of speech. They proposed the use of a "percontation point", a reversed question mark, at the end of a sentence that is meant to have a hidden or sarcastic notion. Thankfully this was never implemented and a majority of the world is still in the dark regarding half of written literature. Can you imagine having to point out every tongue-in-cheek remark and satirical statement to the general public? Yikes. I will however, start using a reversed question mark on social media sites when I don't want what I'm saying to be taken seriously.
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