Acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms

`We, however, for our part, are convinced that the chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms; accordingly we employ those terms which the bulk of people are accustomed to use 1⁄4' Galen [1]. Medical writing has incorporated many changes to help compress ever more words onto paper and electronic pages. Initialisms and their pronounceable variant, the acronym, are favoured increasingly in these media, often at the price of clarity. Urologists, like all participants in any community of practice (in business parlance [2]), use language speci®c to their work which facilitates communication and helps de®ne the community. Unique acronyms and other abbreviations are features of communal terminology and in urology no term has better depicted the speciality throughout much of the 20th century than `TURP'. This and many other abbreviations/acronyms have transformed all forms of medical communication. Curiously, there seem to be no rules for abbreviated neologisms; anyone is at liberty to create one as the need or desire arises, but the marketplace of medical dialogue and discourse determines their durability and value. Whereas each medical speciality, just as any community of practice, has its distinct set of abbreviations, a more general set is accepted by most clinicians at large. However, abbreviated terminology contributes to the sense of jargon held by a layman or other outsider who lacks the appropriate Rosetta stone to decipher the language (Fig. 1).