NATO writing

Sometimes a rule liberates itself from its original motivation. Expand all acronyms is one of those, and it gets on my nerves. Here's one example among many: eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a powerful in-kernel virtual machine technology…

There are two kinds of readers. Those who know that eBPF is a kind of virtual machine aren't helped by that parenthesis. Those who don't know yet are misled.

The original intention behind the rule may be that readers should understand the acronym better. A laudable goal. However, the jump from that goal to expand all acronyms is a long one. The rule posits that few readers know what NATO is if they see that abbreviation, but it if they see its expansion, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, they immediately understand.

I'm sure there are acronyms that can be well explained using their expansion. They seem to be a minority, though, and particularly if the expansion includes words like Extensible, Open, Service, Simple or Universal. Abbreviations that were negotiated can be anodyne too, as NATO is.

This not a good rule.

(Sorry for ranting. Had to get that out of the system. I like the treaty, BTW. Not even 30 sentences long and quite readable.)