MMR, BLT and CSIS

These days we live fast. Abbreviations rule. We even recycle acronyms to mean new things, though this can create confusion. Taking over as Department Head at the college, I became an IRA -- an Instructor with Responsibility Allowance. I never got used to the term.

I still associated it with Irish Republican Army, so frequently mentioned in the Irish folk songs we sang in the sixties. I never quite came to terms with the cognitive dissonance created when the two meanings clashed in my mind each time someone called me an IRA. (No, I wanted to reply. You've got me wrong. My only politico-religious belief is anti-ismism.)

Then there's MLA. The Modern Language Association has just published a seventh edition of its documentation style handbook, confirming parenthetical notations in the text as the norm. Generations raised reading online texts with live links are unperturbed by these little objects. For me, they disturb the flow of meaning. I still have fond memories of numbered footnotes.

Of course in British Columbia, MLA also means a Member of the Legislative Assembly, our provincial parliament. Yes, that's the very same place where the Opposition party is engaged in an internal cat fight just when the governing party has shot itself in both feet.

Fortunately, some acronyms remain unambiguous. A BLT, or bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich can be ordered in any diner by using its short epithet. Parents of young children know the vaccine combo contained in MMR. And for Canadians, the latest mischief CSIS gets up to never ceases to amaze.

By the way, I don't mean The Center for Strategic and International Studies. I'm referring to the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency.