Have you ever attended a presentation and been confused as to what an acronym meant? Have you asked what it meant or did you wait in vain for someone else to ask first? Have you thought you knew what it meant only to realize after a minute or two that you didn't?
The problem with not defining the acronyms that you use in a presentation or talk are that a particular acronym means different thing to different people.
We all know, or think we know, what certain acronyms mean - SDK means Software Development Kit, JVM is Java Virtual Machine - and some acronyms are so well known that they can be relied upon to always mean the same thing. Does anyone use the acronym IBM to mean anything other than International Business Machines? However many acronyms are reused for different meanings.
The other problem is that it can take a few seconds to remember or to work out what the acronym means. That is time you should have been paying more attention to the presenter.
When presenting please define your acronyms, even if it is to a room of your peers, as it is almost certain someone doesn't know what the acronym means and will interrupt to ask, breaking your train of thought and prompting other questions to happen. It is also annoying when you get asked to elaborate on something or to clarify a point when the question about the acronym affected the flow of the presentation!
Is it also necessary to use the acronym at all? It doesn't save much, if any time, to say the acronym as it does to say the full expression. It saves time for your audience when they don't have to decipher the acronyms and can pay more attention to the actual content of the presentation.
The problem with not defining the acronyms that you use in a presentation or talk are that a particular acronym means different thing to different people.
We all know, or think we know, what certain acronyms mean - SDK means Software Development Kit, JVM is Java Virtual Machine - and some acronyms are so well known that they can be relied upon to always mean the same thing. Does anyone use the acronym IBM to mean anything other than International Business Machines? However many acronyms are reused for different meanings.
The other problem is that it can take a few seconds to remember or to work out what the acronym means. That is time you should have been paying more attention to the presenter.
When presenting please define your acronyms, even if it is to a room of your peers, as it is almost certain someone doesn't know what the acronym means and will interrupt to ask, breaking your train of thought and prompting other questions to happen. It is also annoying when you get asked to elaborate on something or to clarify a point when the question about the acronym affected the flow of the presentation!
Is it also necessary to use the acronym at all? It doesn't save much, if any time, to say the acronym as it does to say the full expression. It saves time for your audience when they don't have to decipher the acronyms and can pay more attention to the actual content of the presentation.
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