I had a customer the other day say H-Vac instead of H-V-A-C. What a moron! Those of us in the industry know that it's right to say each individual letter in the word, and it makes a difference. If I was an H-Vac guy, I'd be selling vacuum cleaners, but I'm installing heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning, not hepa vacuums, so people just have to recognize what I am doing and why it makes sense to use my real title. It would be like if you called your doctor Doc. No doctor wants to be a doc, unless he's in a MASH unit or something. It makes him seem like he's a computer document rather than a fully-trained doctor.

Or, maybe you want to call your president Pres or your mayor May. Pres Obama or May Barrett. That's dumb. Do you say you have an It department at work, or is it I-T? It's I-T, folks. Leave the acronym-as-words for Europeans and Socialists, like NATO or NAFTA or INFORSE.