Almost exactly 10 years ago (“Terms Of Engagement” from July 2008), I used this space to ask you about engineering acronyms. Are they time- and space-savers or confounding and unnecessarily overdone? Results were mixed. We still like our terminology to reflect real-life usage, and more recently, I’ve been wrestling with another category of dilemma and I could use your input. The basic quiz category here is: One word or two?
What do I mean? Well, here are a few examples where, to quote fictional pseudo-psychic Shawn Spencer of the TV show Psych, “I’ve heard it both ways.”