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Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay. We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.

Contributors:

Joe Guidry

Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.

Jeff Stidham

Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.

William Yelverton

William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.

Jim Beamguard

Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.

Jackie Papandrew:

Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.

Camille Beredjick

Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.

Jim Harnish

Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.

Angela Hunt

Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.

Sheryl Young

Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.

Christie Gold

Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.

Natalie D. Preston

Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.

Fernando Figueroa

Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.

Gary Beemer

Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.

Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.

Kris DiGiovanni

Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com

H. David Braswell Jr.

H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.

Sean Marcus

Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com

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Watch Your Language!

Posted May 1, 2010 by Nicole Yunger Halpern

Updated May 1, 2010 at 06:29 PM

Last spring, I interned at the SIL in DC—pardon, at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries in the District of Columbia. After registering at NMNH (the National Museum of Natural History), I reported to NMAH (the National Museum of American History) to work in its Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology (I wish that had an acronym, but it doesn’t). The internship’s perks blew my mind—the discount on SI (Smithsonian Institution) merchandise, the free passes to IMAXs (Image MAXimums) at NASM (the National Air and Space Museum). Rather, the perks would have blown my mind, but the lingo exploded it first.

The more vernacular I mastered, the more I discovered I needed to master. Upon realizing that “LC” denotes the Library of Congress, I learned that “LOC” does, too. And the LC/LOC has a building referred to as “LM.” But sharper fangs and hairier hides lurked in the Bedroom Closet of Alarming Appellations.

DC houses the driest, most forgettable, paint-the-walls-gray-and-don’t-even-think-of-hanging-curtains names: the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Surface Transportation Board, Administrative Committee of the Federal Register. Each name accomplishes its purpose—to identify the class of red tape concerns that that organization. But the names have no souls. Like Frankenstein, each seems assembled from a grab-bag of parts. Looking to christen a new organization? Chuck a dart, and see whether it lands on Alliance, Administration, Center, Board, Agency, Bureau, Institute, Office, or Council. Flip a coin: heads, we stick “National” in front of the name; tails, “United States.”

Before congratulating yourself on not being one of DC’s name-nudniks, consider whether your language deserves a tune-up. Do you reel off acronyms faster than the NFO (National Fishing Organization) reels in trout? You sound in-the-know, but if no one else knows the acronyms you know, you’ll come off less as knowledgeable than as a know-it-all. The more your interlocutor scratches her head over acronyms, the less she digests your message.

If she knows your shorthand, though, acronyms can speed up communication. Pepper conversations with acronyms—if your dinner guest isn’t allergic to alphabet soup.

Now that we’ve settled our acronym problems, let’s tackle lackluster names. Joe Citizen can’t scrub them from NGOs, but he can change his government. (Theoretically). If you lean right, rally against the bureaucracy represented by these names. What does Transportation Command do that the Transportation Department can’t? Scrap the former—and its name! If you lean left, attack not the bureaucracy’s size, but its word choice. Replace “Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences” with “Military Medicine” and “United States Mission to the United Nations” with “Hopeless.”

Please don’t abuse our language. It serves us well. Better than DC’s name-nudniks.

OK?

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