OMG! I wasn’t feeling like a VIP, so I went to the ENT and I was diagnosed with ENS.

I hate acronyms. I hear sentences like the one above at work all the time. We have an “Acronyms and Key Terms Definition” document and it has over 3600 terms. Seriously, over 3000 acronyms.

It’s annoying. We talk and write in alphabet soup all the time. And it’s a tool for showing how much you know — if you can stuff a ton of acronyms into your sentences, then obviously you know what’s going on. Poor newbies — they must wonder when they left planet Earth and entered a world where another language is spoken. It’s not welcoming. It’s not living up to the promise on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” Need to add “give me your acronymically-challenged.”

I blame FDR for the popularity of acronyms. Think about it, are there any presidents before Franklin Roosevelt that are known by their initials? Do we refer to Abraham Lincoln as AL? Or George Washington as GW? Or Millard Fillmore as MF? No, we don’t. FDR must liked going by his DJ FDR initials so much that he introduced acronyms into our society — OSS, CIA, FBI.

And now, they are everywhere. It’s just a sign of laziness–we’re too lazy to say the whole thing. We even create acronyms for our curses: SOB, BS, FU, WTF. My personal opinion: if you are going to call someone a “SOB”, then you’re not really irritated enough to be calling them anything. If you’re passionate enough to be cursing, then USE THE WHOLE CURSE, you son of a bitch!

STOP BEING LAZY, AMERICA! I urge you join my new group ASS — Acronyms Signal Sloth. I thought about calling it Acronyms Signal Satan, but I really don’t know if Satan hates acronyms as much as I do or not. And I really don’t want to be speaking on behalf of Satan.

Fight sloth, laziness (and potentially evil) — NO MORE ACRONYMS!