if u didn't know, they're going to introduce vanity car number plates 'soon', those where you can put words and such.

anyway so it comes to my mind, i have absolutely no idea why i thought of it, that there will have to be someone in charge of approving the number plates, weeding out the vulgarities and obscenities and political incorrectness or anything. so it means someone is going to sit in the office, all day looking at number plate names! perhaps i exaggerate and he doesn't spend all day doing it, but he will be obliged to spend a great part of his time doing that. which equals to laughing at silly number plates and having a ball of a time. so isn't that a great job? and it must be a person of decent caliber to decipher all the ridiculous names and acronyms, which means decent qualifications and remuneration

anyway there was a nice article in Straits Times on Sunday:

First, some definitions: Abbreviation refers to any shortening of a word or phrase. For example, 'flu' is an abbreviation for 'influenza', 'plane' for 'aeroplane' and 'maths' for 'mathematics'.

Portmanteau words - derived from combining the meaning and sounds of two words - are special cases of abbreviations. For example, 'Oxbridge' blends 'Oxford' and 'Cambridge', 'motel' combines 'motor' and 'hotel', and Singapore's own 'Mindef' melds 'ministry' and 'defence'.

The most famous examples of portmanteau words in literature are in Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass. When Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain ''Twas brillig, and the slithy toves...', Humpty Dumpty tells her: 'brillig' means 'four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner', 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy', and so on. 'You see it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word.' It is likely that Singapore's Ministry of Defence is known as Mindef - not, thank goodness, MOD - because a highly literate man, Dr Goh Keng Swee, was the minister when it acquired its abbreviation.

Initialism or alphabetism is yet another special case of abbreviation, formed from the initial letters of names or expressions, each letter being pronounced separately: for example, PIE, CTE, AYE, CPF, HDB and EDB.

And acronym is a special case of initialism, where the abbreviation formed from the initial letters can be pronounced as a unit: for example, Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and radar (radio detection and ranging) - the last being an example of an acronym containing non-initial letters.

i am determined to try to make everyone get it right