Mine is OOO for Out Of Office. I always misread it in my head like a ghost and it takes me a few seconds to process. It also doesn’t translate to speech—you have to say the whole thing.
Interested to see if others have similar acronyms they beef with.
GUI. Stop sounding it out as gooey it makes me uncomfortable.
You say G-U-I? I’m sorry but I’m on the gooey side on this argument. G-U-I takes too long and sounds weird.
i agree. i am a recent gooey-convert. same with TUI (terminal ui), but not UI.
I’ve never had to say TUI. I usually just say “termainal” or “command line”. UI depends on the context, sometimes “u-i” sometimes “user interface”
a TUI is usually more interactive, such as Vim, and basically a full GUI, but rendered as text.
‘command line interface’ (CLI) typically means you type out commands and thats it, such as a Bash program or Git or something.
Someone had recently named their newly minted GUI toolkit as “gooey”. I was thinking of trying to talk them out of it because imagine the confusing conversations. Then I thought more about my decision and decided to spend my time on more productive tasks.
There is nothing more productive than arguing with people over software names.
Let’s bike shed this sucker!
Same. All through school and in University, lecturers and professors called it G.U.I., then when I entered the workforce, managers were saying “gooey”, I was so confused, I didn’t know what they meant and I couldn’t take them seriously when they said it.
Now 15 years later, I still cringe when people say “gooey”, I deliberately make an effort to say “G.U.I.” in an effort to correct them.
gweee
“gooey”
My I have a few coworkers that pronounce URL as Earl. 🤮
its either that or soft g and that would be troublesome
I’ve literally never heard it any other way. O_O
I was reading this entire thread thinking “most of the examples people are listing are initialisms not acronyms”, then your comment made me realise that some things I have consider an initialism, others treat as an acronym… I wonder which of the examples in this discussion I sound out letter by letter but other people are pronouncing like it’s a whole word.
GUI is the perfect example. I have always pronounced it “Gee you eye”. And growing up that’s how it heard it. Now, most of my friends say “Gooey” and it takes me a hot minute to understand what they’re talking about because it’s always been “gee you eye” for me. I’ve only noticed “gooey” in the last 3ish years. I can’t train myself out of it (and I’ve tried), but I’m not sure I want too.
I’m wondering if a DUI will cease to be a Dee You Eye and soon become a Dooey?
This is why I don’t think we should be bothering with the distinction between initialism and acronym in casual conversation. Everyone has their own way of using words and phrases that can be radically different, and there seems to be no disctinctive rules on when you can and can’t pronounce them.