Talk:Initialism

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QANTAS seems like a bad example here because it is not an initialism but rather, like NATO, an acronym. No one pronounces QANTAS as Que Ay En Tee Ay Es, which, by definition, is the difference between an initialism and an acronym

viz. that the initialism is pronounced letter by letter and the acronym is pronounced as a single word unit.

M-W defines initialism as "an acronym formed from initial letters". The American Heritage dictionary makes the distinction you describe here (an acronym is a word and an initialism is pronounced letter by letter. -- Kimiko 07:28 18 May 2003 (UTC)

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I'm removing the bit "The YMCA is now just a name and is no longer officially short for Young Men's Christian Association." - I can find no evidence that this has ever been true. Instead, I'm putting in KFC. - Jim Redmond 21:47, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

KFC is a good example but the reason may be incorrect according to this link [1] the reason was not because of fried but because of the state of KY...But than again at the same site is this link [2] and at the bottom it does mention name change for fried's sake. I don't know. nothing changed. help. Ht1848 03:54, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)