Brewchin

Me too.

People learn from reading that kind of thing. Aside from it being unnecessary and confusing, there’s going to be a percentage of people who’ll think “Ascii” (or whatever) is a name rather than an abbreviation.

They probably have a style guide, as most media outlets do, that says pronounceable acronyms/initialisms are to be written like a name and the rest as everyone expects.

So you get Ascii, Unix and Nasa alongside IBM and PCMCIA.

The core of what you’re saying has been my approach for many years. Never go “all in” on anything.

Convenience is one thing (to me, but it’s everything to so many), but it’s just one factor. And if it means I am (or my data is) the product, it costs too much.