"I can't stand acronyms in general," says William Savedoff, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (acronym: CGD). When a report comes with a one-to-two page list of all the acronyms a reader will encounter, he says, well maybe that's just a few acronyms too many.
Acronyms can also dehumanize. Health gurus worked hard to come up with a phrase to describe people who have AIDS. The phrase "people living with HIV/AIDS" was used to get away from the stigma of calling them AIDS victims, says Savedoff. Then the phrase was turned it into an acronym: PLWHA. "It seems so impersonal," he says.