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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47862
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47862
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

I agree with Mark Baker. If it is a real world acronym everybody knows, just use it. For real-world acronyms few people know, or made up acronyms, a common ploy used in fiction is to use the acronym in front of a novice character, that then tries to find out what it is. Perhaps using a search-engine, or asking a friend.

Or an instructor writes it on a whiteboard and asks the class what it stands for.

> Captain Bell wrote on the board, I S B A D. "What does this stands for?"
> 
> Marcus, in the front row, raised his hand, and spoke before being called on. "Interstellar Battle And Defense".
> 
> _Show off,_ Timothy thought. _He would have told us._

Or, a novice asks a friend, that happens to know, or an official from an organization introduces themselves to civilians, and informs them of the meaning, as part of their explanation for why they are there.

In general, every acronym you know, you learned the meaning of it from somewhere, somehow. From a website, from a friend, on TV or radio, in a book, from your parents, etc. If you don't think an acronym is commonly known by strangers on the street, explain it in the book, devise a scene in which a character learns what it means like we naturally learn new words or acronyms, so the reader "overhears" that and learns "naturally" too.

If you have particularly acronym-laden speech, the best way is to either ignore it, or engineer some sort of argument between two experts in the dialogue.

> "I think its the F A S, no way its S P C."
> 
> "What are you smokin'? No anti-particle source can do this, it has to be the spin parser."

So we get the impression the acronyms do mean something, even though that is incomplete. But engineers, mathematicians, medical doctors, physicists (and many others) speak in jargon all the time, both to save time and be precise. For a great deal of acronym-laden jargon, treat it like characters speaking in a foreign language conveying foreign concepts with no simple translation (which it is). Namely, the best a novice can do is get a summary of what is being said, there is no quick way to convey all the meaning.

Original score: 3