The other day, Raymond Chen posted Pidls and monikers do roughly the same thing, just backwards.

And in that post he had the following text (emphasis mine): 

When operating with the Windows shell, you will almost certainly find yourself at some point working with a pointer to an item ID list, known also as a "pidl" (rhymes with "middle").

When I saw it, I was thinking about how he could have said "pidl" (rhymes with "MIDL") instead. You know, MIDL, the Microsoft Interface Definition Language.

Luckily this was just a momentary thing. I realized that it was unlikely that someone would know how MIDL was pronounced but not know how PIDL was pronounced. They both rhyme with "middle."

But I thought about how most of these industry acronyms tend to have listed the pronunciation in various glossaries. Once in a while there will be helpful text like Raymond's above or Bruce McKinney's Hardcore Visual Basic explanation of how to say GUID:

NOTE: Let me indulge readers from my part of the world by describing the pronunciation of GUID as geoduck without the "uck." Those of you who don’t know a geoduck from a mallard can just say "Goo-Id."

But most of the time we let people guess, and that is why half of the people say SEQUEL while the other half say ESS-QUE-ELL. Or why almost everyone says OLAY while a few people say OH-ELL-EEE.

The platform SDK will religiously make sure to call the first mention National Language Support (NLS) or Graphic Device Interface (GDI). Those are just pronounced with the letters, but why does it waste time talking about Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) rather than telling us it rhymes with scuzzy? you know, like advice we can use?

And I have heard people tell stories about the way people mispronounce things -- even though there is no real central communication of what the pronunciation ought to be. So we don't tell people how to pronounce it (other than by just pronouncing it ourselves when it comes up), yet we silently judge them for their choice.

We are no better with globalization support -- we say ebb-cid-ick for EBCDIC and laugh at the people who say EEE-BEE-CEE-DEE-EYE-CEE. And so on.

On the other hand, I do the same thing when I am introduced to people -- I tell them my name is Michael. And then sometimes they ask whether I prefer Michael or Mike or ???? and I say whatever. But I think I do silently judge people who ignore the initial name I used, sometimes.

So is it a test we do, to see who is paying attention?

In the new HBO show Lucky Louie, Louie blew a weekend that they had off because Louie decided to get her flowers, which ordinarily would be quite sweet but not so much when he gets her red roses again after she had told him she did not want to get red roses, that she really did not like them. Now obviously the stakes are not as high in these other situations, but I think we want to know people are listening to us.

There is more to having a conversation than learning to shut the hell up until the other person is done talking and spending the whole time thinking of what you will say when they are done. In fact there are two more things, specifically:

  • Listen to what they are saying
  • Remember it for later

Could the thing we seem to do with acronyms be part of the same type of test? And if so, isn't the joke on us since (for example) a lot more people read here then will ever hear a word of what I say. And I am not going to add an audio track to the blog (I can see it now, SIAO on Tape!).

Note that even recognizing the fundamental silliness of how we (and how I) act, nothing will probably change here. Because if I give the pronunciation every time, I am doing a remedial reading course. And if I say what the acronym stands for each time, I am like Platform SDK West.

But I will try not to judge in the future on the pronunciations. I'll remember the trivia question Triumph the Insult Comic Dog asked the Star Wars fans camped out before Attack of the Clones opened:

Triumph: What substance was Han Solo frozen in?
Star Wars Fans: Carbonite!
Triumph: No, I'm sorry, that is incorrect. The correct answer is 'Who gives a fuck?'

This will help remind me that the fewer of these acronyms you know how to pronounce, the cooler you probably are. We geeks need to get over ourselves, you know?

And from now on, I'll tell people I prefer Michael when they ask. And then I'll feel more justified in silently judging the ones who say Mike since they took the time to ask and then ignored the answer.

But the folks who talk about ATM machines and Very VIP People are still toast in my book. Because everyone knows how silly that is....