FOMO, an acronym

We tend to refer to anything that has been reduced to capital letters as an acronym. Technically this isn’t correct. An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.
 
For example, ATO (Australian Taxation Office) and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) are not acronyms because they are not pronounced as words. Instances like this are properly referred to as ‘initialism’ (not abbreviations – that’s another matter entirely.)
 
Amongst those who are into these finer details of language or literature there is an on-going debate about whether it is ok to call initials that are not pronounced as words acronyms. Personally, I like to make the distinction!

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