A three-letter acronym (TLA), or three-letter abbreviation, is an abbreviation consisting of three letters. These are usually the initial letters of the words of the phrase abbreviated, and are written in capital letters (upper case); three-letter ''abbreviations'' such as ''etc.'' and ''Mrs.'' are not three-letter ''acronyms'', but "TLA" is a TLA (an example of an autological abbreviation). Most three-letter abbreviations are not, strictly,

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

s, but rather

initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

s: all the letters are pronounced as the names of letters, as in '' APA'' . Some are true acronyms, pronounced as a word: as with

computed axial tomography A computed tomography scan (CT scan; formerly called computed axial tomography scan or CAT scan) is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers ...

, for example, CAT is almost always pronounced as the animal's name () in "CAT scan". Even the ''initialisms'' are however considered ''three-letter acronyms'', because that term appeared first in widespread use, and is overwhelmingly popular today.

Examples

* Countries: SRI, USA,

CAR A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as t ...

, UAE, DRC, etc. * Famous people: FDR,

JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

, MLK, OBL, RBG, RDJ and MJK * Computer phrases:

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

, DOS, RAM, ROM, and

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any ...

* File extensions:

JPG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image ...

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, and XLS * Corporations: BMW, IBM, AMD and NEC * Currency: USD, GBP, and CHF * Business:

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

, CFO and other

C-level Corporate titles or business titles are given to corporate officers to show what duties and responsibilities they have in the organization. Such titles are used by publicly and privately held for-profit corporations, cooperatives, non-profit or ...

officers * Three Letter Agencies:

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, FBI, CBI, FSB, and NSA *

Television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...

s: ABC ( Aus., U.S.), BBC (UK), CBC (

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

, Japan), and NHK (Japan) *

Personal advertisement A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an adve ...

s: SBM for Single Black Male, STR for Short Term Relationship * Chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals:

GMO A genetically modified organism (GMO) is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. The exact definition of a genetically modified organism and what constitutes genetic engineering varies, with ...

, LSD and MSG * Religion: LDS, SBC and SDA * Clinical medicine: CAD and CHF * Communications shorthand: LOL and

OMG OMG may refer to: * Oh my God (sometimes also Oh my Goodness or Oh my Gosh), a common abbreviation, often used in SMS messages and Internet communication Acronyms * OMG is the IATA code for Omega Airport, Omega, Namibia * Operational manoeuvre ...

* Military and weaponry: BFR and

RPG RPG may refer to: Military * Rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon **''Ruchnoi Protivotankoviy Granatomyot'' (Russian: ''Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт''), hand-held anti-tank grenade laun ...

* Wars and political conflicts:

HYW HYW may refer to: * Conway–Horry County Airport, in South Carolina, United States * Hinchley Wood railway station, in England * Hundred Years' War * Western Armenian, a form of modern Armenian language (ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the r ...

and WWI * IATA airport codes: LAX and LHR * Academic testing: ACT, SAT * Musical groups: R.E.M., XTC, TLC, E.L.O., MC5, GBH, O.A.R., MDC, D.R.I., JFA * Canine registries: AKC and CKC * Sports organizations:

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

, MLB, (North America); AFL and NRL (Australia); NPB (Japan); ACB, LFP (Spain); IPL (India), EPL (England),

WBO The World Boxing Organization (WBO) is an organization which sanctions professional boxing bouts. It is recognized by the International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) as one of the four major world championship groups, alongside the World Boxing ...

* Ship prefixes: HMS, USS and RMS * State postal abbreviations: NSW, QLD,

VIC Vic (; es, Vic or Pancracio Celdrán (2004). Diccionario de topónimos españoles y sus gentilicios (5ª edición). Madrid: Espasa Calpe. p. 843. ISBN 978-84-670-3054-9. «Vic o Vich (viquense, vigitano, vigatán, ausense, ausetano, ausonense): ...

and TAS (Australia) * Political Parties:

BJP The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

, CCP, GOP and AAP *Air Navigation Services ( ANS): SAR, AIS, FPC,

ATM ATM or atm often refers to: * Atmosphere (unit) or atm, a unit of atmospheric pressure * Automated teller machine, a cash dispenser or cash machine ATM or atm may also refer to: Computing * ATM (computer), a ZX Spectrum clone developed in Mo ...

, MET, CNS,

ASM ASM may refer to: Codes * American Samoa, ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code * Asmara International Airport, IATA airport code * Assamese language, ISO 639 language code ''asm'' Organizations * Aare Seeland mobil, a Swiss bus and train operator * Al ...

, ATS, ATC,

FIS FIS or fis may refer to: Science and technology * '' Fis'', an ''E. Coli'' gene * Fis phenomenon, a phenomenon in linguistics * F♯ (musical note) * Flight information service, an air traffic control service * Frame Information Structure, a ...

History and origins

The exact phrase ''three-letter acronym'' appeared in the sociology literature in 1975. Three-letter acronyms were used as

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and image ...

s in biological sciences, from 1977 and their practical advantage was promoted by Weber in 1982. They are used in many other fields, but the term TLA is particularly associated with computing. In 1980, the manual for the Sinclair

ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-c ...

home computer used and explained TLA.

Steven Vickers Steve Vickers (born c. 1953) is a British mathematician and computer scientist. In the early 1980s, he wrote ROM firmware and manuals for three home computers, the ZX81, ZX Spectrum, and Jupiter Ace. The latter was produced by Jupiter Cantab, a ...

''ZX81 Basic Programming'', Sinclair Research Limited, page 161 "As you can see, everything has a three letter abbreviation (TLA)." The specific generation of three-letter acronyms in computing was mentioned in a JPL report of 1982.TDA Progress Report
R. Hull (1982) An Introduction to the new Productivity Information Management System page 176 In 1988, in a paper titled "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science", eminent computer scientist

Edsger W. Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ( ; ; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, systems scientist, and science essayist. He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing progra ...

wrote (disparagingly), "No endeavour is respectable these days without a TLA" By 1992 it was in a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

handbook.

Combinatorics

The number of possible three-letter abbreviations using the 26 letters of the alphabet from A to Z (AAA, AAB ... to ZZY, ZZZ) is 26 × 26 × 26 = 17,576. An additional 26 × 26 × 10 = 6760 can be produced for each single position allowed to be a digit 0-9, such as 2FA, P2P, or WW2, giving a total of 37,856 such three-character strings. In standard English, WWW is the TLA whose

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

requires the most syllables—typically nine. The usefulness of TLAs typically comes from its being quicker to say than the phrase it represents; however saying 'WWW' in English requires three times as many syllables as the phrase it is meant to abbreviate (World Wide Web). "WWW" is sometimes abbreviated to "dubdubdub" in speech.

References in popular culture

* As early as 1967, the musical Hair included the song "Initials", whose final verse consisted only of TLAs, viz: "

LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

IRT IRT may refer to: Science and technology * Imagery rehearsal therapy, a treatment for nightmare disorders * Immunoreactive trypsinogen, newborn screening test for cystic fibrosis * Infrared thermography * Infrared Telescope (IRT), carried on S ...

USA LSD. LSD LBJ FBI

. FBI CIA LSD LBJ." * In 1999, the author

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...

remarked: "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for." * According to the

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANE ...

, a journalist once asked hacker

Paul Boutin Paul Boutin (born December 11, 1961 in Lewiston, Maine) is an American magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context. Boutin, who began writing for ''Wired'' in 1997, wrote for ''The New York Times'' from 200 ...

what he thought the biggest problem in computing in the 1990s would be. Paul's straight-faced response was: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." * The

also mentions the abbreviation "ETLA" for "extended three-letter acronym" to refer to four-letter acronyms/abbreviations. "Extended three-letter acronym" is sometimes abbreviated to "XTLA".TLA
jargon.net * In the comic strip

Dilbert ''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title cha ...

the title character is working on a project called TTP. The initials stand for 'The TTP Project.' This is also an example of a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hof ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Three-letter Acronym Abbreviations T

Examples

History and origins

Combinatorics

References in popular culture

See also

References