A recent letter to the Straits Times carried a complaint regarding the frequent use of acronyms in print and broadcast media in Singapore. The writer took issue with the usage of ‘YOG’ and ‘NDP’ in broadcast media, since saying ‘Youth Olympic Games’ and "’National Day Parade’ only requires 2 or 3 more syllables.
While i’m not entirely convinced by his arguments, the usage of acronyms in Singapore – especially in the public sector – can indeed be an eyesore.
Take for instance the press releases on free trade agreements (FTAs). I certainly understand and support the usage of FTA in place of its full name and it’s used widely in print too.
What I don’t understand however is the shortening of names such as the Singapore-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement to the very clumsy SCRFTA, and subsequently using it in the press release in the forms of “The SCRFTA is…” or “Under the SCRFTA…”, when one could simply do without the ugly acronym and say “This FTA is…” or “Under this FTA…” instead.
After all, since the press conference is about the Singapore-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement, any reference to an FTA would presumably be with regard to the agreement between Singapore and Costa Rica and not anything else.
The same press release also saw the need to acronymise several other terms like technical barriers to trade, intellectual property rights and sanitary and phytosanitary (measures), even though those acronyms were not subsequently used in the release.
It’s a pity that those unnecessary capitalised acronyms visually sullied an otherwise faultless piece of writing.
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