Are we overusing acronyms in Singapore?

SINGAPORE — As a journalist covering Parliament in the past fortnight, I found myself entangled in an alphabet soup of acronyms that would befuddle even the savviest observer.

What were some hair-raising abbreviations that came up in the recently concluded Budget debates? Gear-Up, DfMA, Uplift and OCSS were among them.

Granted, these terms — when unpacked — can be a mouthful. Gear-Up stands for Guiding and Empowering Students for Affiliation and Resilience to Unlock their Potential, a set of after-school programmes for students.

DfMA means Design for Manufacturing and Assembly. Uplift is the Uplifting Pupils in Life and Inspiring Families Taskforce, and OCSS, the Off-Site Construction Special Scheme.

Acronyms are hardly a new phenomenon and have had a place in the Singaporean vernacular for a long time.

Many have, in fact, become endearing symbols of what they represent, such as HDB (Housing and Development Board), SIA (Singapore Airlines) and PUB, the national water agency.

While these acronyms are so widely used here that they hardly require explanation, others are not as run-of-the-mill.

Using unfamiliar acronyms can come at the expense of clarity, especially when speakers fail to explain the full term beforehand.

I observed that in the recent parliamentary debates on the ministries’ budgets, some government leaders used acronyms such as ITM (industry transformation map) and SSO (social service office) without first setting out the full terms.

This may lead to confusion, particularly when an acronym has various possible meanings.

SSO, for instance, could refer to a social service organisation or even the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Speakers in public fora such as Parliament — where the Republic’s laws are made — must ensure that they explain terms adequately, so that Singaporeans can grasp what often are complex legislative and policy changes.

Picture someone observing parliamentary proceedings from the galleries at Parliament House for the first time.

Will this person, who may not read the news regularly, understand the terms being bandied about?

This ought to be a good starting point for speakers.

DON’T ASSUME EVERY ACRONYM IS UNDERSTOOD

Five past and present Members of Parliament (MPs) I spoke to agreed that lawmakers need to exercise greater care when using acronyms.

As Ms Kuik Shiao-Yin — a Nominated MP from 2014 to 2018 — put it, parliamentary debates are meant to “travel beyond the chamber”, and it is vital that leaders “learn to use words that sound as if they are spoken by a living, feeling human, rather than that spoken by a mechanical institution”.

She added: “When people rapidly get lost in the dense foliage of terms they don’t understand, they withdraw their attention.”

Acronyms, she argued, are a barrier to meaning-making at best. At worst, they are disempowering and can have a dehumanising effect.

She cited the example of the acronym FDWs — short for foreign domestic workers — which is used to refer to women who help out in Singaporean households.

Calling them FDWs creates an “unintended distance between these women and the rest of us”, said Ms Kuik.

Ms Anthea Ong, who began her term as a Nominated MP last year, said she did not immediately grasp an acronym floated in Parliament recently.

“It’s an issue only if the acronym is not explained at the start of a conversation… It can come at the expense of clarity if the assumption is made by the speaker that the audience understands the acronyms used,” she said.

Mr Saktiandi Supaat, an MP for the Bishan-Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency, said speakers use acronyms because they are more efficient, not just in Parliament but also in work settings.

This practice, however, is “not conducive in the long run”, added Mr Saktiandi, who is with the ruling People’s Action Party.

Over dinner with a friend recently, I threw up some acronyms that surfaced in Parliament, including ITM and DfMA.

My friend, a 28-year-old compliance executive, had not heard of them.

She said: “(The ministers) should just spend a few seconds saying what they mean instead of using short form.”

COMMUNICATE CLEARLY

What else can we do about the problem?

While time constraints may sometimes pressure those making parliamentary speeches to use abbreviations, they must make sure that all acronyms are well explained at the start of their speeches, said Ms Ong.

Some MPs told me that they already make it a point to do so.

“In my speeches, I will usually try to introduce the full term before I use its acronym later on in the same speech, if at all,” said Non-Constituency MP Dennis Tan from the opposition Workers’ Party.

Associate Professor Walter Theseira, another Nominated MP, felt that the frequent use of acronyms here was symptomatic of a broader issue: The tendency to create different policies — each with its own acronym — to deal with various problems.

It may be useful to combine schemes that tackle a general problem into an overarching policy, he said.

For instance, programmes geared at healthcare expenses for the sick could be part of one broad initiative.

Others proposed setting up a repository of frequently used acronyms.

Mr Saktiandi said the Government, the grassroots or the media could publish this legend of acronyms online.

It could also be distributed in hard copy or placed on the notice boards in community clubs so that residents are kept up to date, especially on the latest terms coined for new policies or programmes, he said.

These are great suggestions, but at a more rudimentary level, the job of ensuring clarity does not rest only with the Government and parliamentarians.

The media has a part to play in using acronyms only where absolutely necessary — for brevity when a term is too unwieldy to be repeated, for instance.

Businesses, too, can pitch in by avoiding acronyms when they come up with new products or programmes. Not every new initiative needs a snappy acronym; often, the full term works just fine.

With everyone doing their part to communicate clearly, we can reduce confusion and doubt, and focus on the issues that matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kenneth Cheng is a senior journalist at TODAY, where he covers transport, manpower, defence and consumer issues.