Munching Acronyms and Abbreviations

[bkdelong]

OK all you "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" fans - a work-oriented question for you. MIT OpenCourseWare is the proper name for our site/service/project. The shorthand version is OCW. Is that an abbreviation or an acronym?

Since OpenCourseWare is presented as one word, would it be considered an abbreviation? Or since the proper name is made up of 3 distinct words, would it be considered an acronym?

I ask because in making the OCW Web site more accessible, I want to properly markup any place in our templates where "OCW" appears using the HTML element ACRONYM or ABBR (for Abbreviation) where appropriate.

Thoughts?

Comments

[jessekornblum.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's an acronym; it takes the first letter from each word.

[everlastingwhy.livejournal.com]

I say if the letter is capitalized it's not really one word anyway. OpenCoureWare? No. Opencourseware, maybe. So it's all made up, and I say OCW is just all right with me.

[zsenya.livejournal.com]

I'd agree that it's an acronym. Especially if you all call it "OCW" frequently. An abbreviation is something like "Dep't." for "Department."