10 September 2008

RsBI

Here's a beaut I heard brought up on Rochester, NY radio this morning...

When we talk MLB baseball and the statistical category of Runs Batted In, the accepted acronym we use (RBIs) is grammatically off. It equates to Run Batted Ins. So--we should really be saying RsBI. Got it?

2 comments:

Gil Burgess said...

Just to give credit where credit is due, whoever said that is at least language-conscious. In fact, that person may, indeed, be correct. It is "runs" that we're talking about! What we want to be careful of is the use of the term "acronym". RBI is not really an acronym. It is when a group of first letters of words are put together to form a WORD that we have an acronym

Seth C. Burgess said...

May we call RsBI an instance of Initialism, then?

I've looked up a few different definitions of Acronym, and I still believe that RsBI or RBIs fits the bill. There appears to be no constraint in place indicating that the WORD formed must be an existing word. RsBI forms a new, pronounceable WORD.

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