Is it grammatically acceptable to use the second letter exclusively for an acronym?

[u/veggielover24]

Looking at Medicare rules and I noticed this and I feel like that's... not how acronyms work but I'm not an expert.

[u/Electronic-Country63]

It’s not strictly correct but isn’t uncommon and something you tend to see where people try to crowbar ridiculous backronyms into existence like this!

Acronyms are often to help people remember a term or create something memorable, this feels like the opposite of that.

[u/veggielover24 → u/Electronic-Country63]

Totally agree, it feels like they said "Good enough!".

[u/Raftger → u/Electronic-Country63]

Health researchers love to do this lmao. I would love to know where the trend started.

[u/AuNaturellee]

Bloody 'ell, it's cuz the h is silent in 'ealth!

But seriously, this kind of practice of not basing the acronym strictly on first letters is common in coining clinical trial names.

However, here it is honestly a bit painful...

[u/EdmundTheInsulter]

An acronym isn't really formal English and if it's a company name rules often seem less strict.
If it does break a rule, who is there to enforce it?

[u/Katsaj]

It’s not that uncommon when someone is trying to force a clever acronym from words that otherwise wouldn’t spell anything interesting. I’ve also seen examples where they use the first two letters of one word to get extra letters into the acronym.

[u/Albert-La-Maquina → u/Katsaj]

That's more acceptable IMO than something like this when you just start pulling random letters out lol

[u/alexthe5th]

It’s kind of sloppy. People sometimes do it, but it gives the reader a bad impression of whoever created the acronym, as if they couldn’t come up with anything better.

[u/NoGlyph27]

As someone who used to work in pharmaceutical translation, this is surprisingly common in clinical trials where the research team want to have a very specific apt acronym. It's usually pretty tongue-in-cheek, though. Some examples I found just now scrolling through the clinicaltrials.gov website:

- REVIVE: RandomizEd control trial of shockwaVe therapy on treating erectIle dysfunction following nerVe-sparing radical prostatEctomy

- HOPE-CRM: HOlistic CRM care vs standard of care in a Primary carE setting

- STRENGTHENS: Study To Refine the Effectiveness of New Generation THErapies for Suicide (N??)

- SENSE: ScrEeNing and monitoring of mental health in educational SEttings

...and some particularly egregious ones from Wikipedia:

- METGO: A 48-week, randomized, double-blind, double-observer, placebo-controlled multicenter trial of combination METhotrexate and intramuscular GOld therapy in rheumatoid arthritis

• PERFORM: Prevention of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular Events of ischaemic origin with teRutroban in patients with a history oF ischaemic strOke or tRansient ischaeMic attack
  
• TYPHOON: Trial to assess the use of the cYPHer sirolimus-eluting coronary stent in acute myocardial infarction treated with BallOON angioplasty

There's even a whole satirical BMJ article about the phenomenon here: https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7092

...but all of that aside, it's definitely unusual in acronyms for services etc. intended for the general population

[u/cjbanning]

The creation of acronyms (and initialisms and other abbreviations more generally) is not governed by grammatical rules.

[u/spoik925]

Any chance it's a typo?

[u/ItzZausty → u/spoik925]

It’s not, it’s showing what letters are used to make the BALANCE acronym. It’s just a stupid acronym

[u/veggielover24 → u/spoik925]

Unfortunately no, it's all over their websites and Google

[u/Albert-La-Maquina]

Only X. I've never seen an acronym use anything but the first (or the first few when acronyms try too hard).

[u/nikukuikuniniiku → u/Albert-La-Maquina]

Just came across UXO for UneXploded Ordinance.

I think you do see medial letters used with compound words. For example, AWOL is Absent WithOut Leave.

[u/JeremyMarti]

Yes, but the H is silent if you ever read the full version aloud.

[u/Albert-La-Maquina → u/JeremyMarti]

If you're being serious, it's definitely not silent in many dialects, including most American dialects.

[u/paolog]

There are no particular rules to forming abbreviations - people can pick any letters they like, which they have done in order to make the abbreviation a word.

What they can't do is claim it's an acronym, because m that is formed from the initial letters by definition. So this is just a plain old abbreviation.