Awash in Acronyms

Awash in Acronyms

When I entered government service in 2016, I would encounter a flood of unfamiliar acronyms in daily usage.

Government workers, I found, routinely used this group of capital letters-turned-words like everyday terms. Without so much as an intro or background explanation, they rattled off these acronyms without expanding, exploding, or spelling them out.

The first acronym I noticed to be in constant use is, of course, LGU, which means Local Government Unit, slowly popularized after the passage of the LGC or Local Government Code.

The next ones are names of the different LGU departments and locally based national government agencies or NGAs: PESO for Public Employment Service Office, RHU for Rural Health Unit, DILG for Department of the Interior and Local Government, and so on.

Then there's the MDRRMO, Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, which is apparently a municipal government department closely associated with the OCD (Office of Civil Defense) and NDRRMC (National DRRM Council).

A number of times, I had to be corrected by the MDRRMO staff to get myself to distinguish between MDRRMO and MDRRMC (MDRRM Council): MDRRMO, they said, refers to just the LGU department, while MDRRMC refers to the entire decision- or policy-making body comprising of practically all LGU departments, locally based NGAs, and select NGOs, CSOs, and POs, in which MDRRMO is just the secretariat.

Virtually every unit (a section under a department), department, and agency has an equivalent acronym: PNP, BFP, MNAO, BPLO, LYDO, PDAO, LSB, etc. (Like many employees, I myself was a walking acronym, designated as the "PIO.") DepEd is not exactly an acronym, but a near-acronym called portmanteau, in which the first syllables of a phrase are combined into one term. In each LGU department and government agency, I found, you'll get easily drowned in a sea of jargons that are abbreviated into more acronyms: EO, RA, IRA, CLUP, AIP, IPCR/OPCR, CDP, LDIP, LEDIPO, ABC, etc.

In particular, the DSWD's (and other agencies') ayudas are a dime a dozen, so to speak: 4Ps, MAIP, AICS, AKAP, TUPAD, etc.

In the case of AKAP and TUPAD (which are acronyms that are actually Tagalog words for 'embrace' and 'fulfill,' to lay it on thickly), I have this feeling that these terms are thought up to be acronyms first, and the matching meaning was figured out much later, resulting in something forced. It's just like those acrostic performances in grade school and schoolmarmy speeches that revolve around short big words like "T-R-U-T-H," with each letter assigned a high-sounding virtue that is discussed at length to sleep-inducing extent.

Acronyms are, of course, a necessary shorthand for long-winded phrases or terms (noun and adjective strings), facilitating communication. It is interesting how, over time, due to frequent usage, a number of acronyms have evolved into accepted words in lower case: radar, sonar, laser, scuba, snafu, taser...

When I was younger, someone intimated to me that disco actually meant "dancing in Satan's company," that's why I think I avoided night clubs for a long time until I couldn't. (The claim turned out to be a canard.)

But do government acronyms have to be so lengthy? The Bicolano writer/poet Marne Kilates once griped about exactly this in a lengthy FB post -- a valid complaint. Why can't NDRRMC be just NDRC or something, for example? How can anyone read an acronym like the kilometric PCANRRD or supposed to pronounce PPCLDO without wincing at the length? After all, the whole point of making acronyms is brevity, so having a very long acronym is a thing of irony.

Here in our town, at least one local public school is called DTCMMES. (The closest contender to the tongue-twisting throne is a private school called SVCSBI.)

Veteran journalist Maria Ceres Doyo wrote at length on the same subject of acronyms, but more as an observation: how government has a penchant for, not just using, but also creating, acronyms every minute it seems, especially during the covid-19 pandemic (ECQ, GCQ, LSI, etc.), and lately, according to her latest column article (MIA, AWOL, CBL, POI, HDO, FFJ, EJK, POGO, WPP, PDL).

In our LGU, I had to deal with such long acronyms with weighty-looking letters in quick succession: MPFSDC, KKSBFI, JKWMWC, each one a rather lengthy mishmash or hodgepodge of an agglomeration or concatenation. At least, MLGOO sounds somewhat like a lowing bovine, though choking at mid-sentence.

Sometimes, as a reporter or writer, I just find myself writing down too many acronyms in one breath, but the editor in me is forced to find a way to make the sentence less clunky, clumsy, or cumbersome. For example: "Ang DOLE-R1 ay nakipagtulungan sa LGU, partikular na sa PESO, POSO, MPDC, MDC, at MCDO, upang maipaabot ang panibagong tulong sa mga navalidate ng MSWDO bilang qualified TUPAD beneficiaries."

These government acronyms tend to agglutinize too, further dizzying or confounding you. Examples are DOST-SEI, DA-WB-PRDP MPIMU, etc., turning the 'alphabet soup' into an acronym salad. You have to understand, however, that oftentimes, an acronym needs to be lengthy to make it distinct to avoid redundancy, as in the case of MAC, which currently stands for three things: Municipal Advisory Committee, Mayor's Action Center, and something else ending in Council.

When to use an acronym as is? The rule of thumb is to use an acronym without explanation if it is known or familiar to a great number of people like DOH, DPWH, etc. However, one must define an unfamiliar acronym the first time it is used, but only if it will be used again at least once elsewhere in the sentence, paragraph, or article -- otherwise, spell it out.

Imagine an Orwellian world or 'The Handmaid's Tale'-like (Margaret Atwood) scenario where acronyms are banned and criminalized. That would mean hours and hours spent on writing down and reading same word strings repeatedly when they could be absorbed in split seconds otherwise.

An excess of acronyms, however, would mean a much-abbreviated world of telegraphic messages -- all done in haste, amidst a life of unreflective busyness -- bereft of the luxury of time best spent on smelling the proverbial roses, or at least spent on savoring the beauty of the written word, down to every jot and tittle of the fine print.

Acronyms are like special punctuation marks such as semicolons: they should be used sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. Or they are irritating to read at a fast clip especially if you only half-remember what they mean.