Tuesday 16th June

Hello everyone! I hope you have had an enjoyable Tuesday. I am pleased to report that the rain has held off for most of the day, allowing the children who are in school lots of time to be outside.

Today, I had a meeting with Mr Dunster. Mr Dunster is the CEO of our MAT, SVAT. In just one sentence I have used three abbreviations - can you spot them? Two are acronyms and one is an initialism. Do you know the difference?

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase.

An initialism is an abbreviation that uses the first letter of each word in the phrase pronounced separately e.g. CEO

An acronym is a special kind of abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word e.g. MAT and SVAT.

Pretty complicated stuff! So, I now guess you are trying to work out what CEO, MAT and SVAT have been abbreviated from.

CEO - Chief Executive Officer

MAT - Multi Academy Trust

SVAT - Stour Vale Academy Trust

Can you think of any initialisms you might see around school? HT = Head Teacher; CT = Class teacher; TA = Teaching Assistant; PE = Physical Education; RE = Religious Education.

What about other initialisms that you may see or use in your daily life? KFC = Kentucky Fried Chicken; CD = Compact Disc.

I often hear children in school using the phrase ‘LOL’, this is an abbreviation. But is it an acronym or an initialism? Well, that depends on how you say it - if you spell the letters out then it is an initialism; if you say it as a new word it is an acronym. Just in case any of you are wondering, the unabbreviated form of LOL is ‘laugh out loud’.

The use of ‘text’ language can help us to understand the shortened form of different words and phrases. In the early days of mobile phones (no children, they haven’t always been around) the user would often have a very limited number of words that they could fit into any one text, so people would use abbreviations to fit more information in. The use of these abbreviations have also crept into our spoken language as well. Here are some more examples:

  • IMU - I miss you

  • OMW - On my way

  • BFF - Best friends forever

  • TBH - To be honest

I am sure you can think of many more. I still write texts in the full form and I never understand texts that are full of abbreviations, I would need your help in trying to interpret them.

I must dash now as the computer will shortly switch off.

TTYS. WMU. SA. SS.

Hannah Grasby19/20