This may not be WTF or even OMG, but it's certainly LOL:
By now, if lawyers haven't already taken notice, they should: Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit isn't a big fan of abbreviations, including acronyms. Today, the judge twice questioned the space-saving practice of shortening.
This summer, for quick background, Silberman dropped a footnote in a ruling to spotlight his concern about the excessive use of abbreviations and acronyms.
"Here," the judge wrote in June, "both parties abandoned any attempt to write in plain English, instead abbreviating every conceivable agency and statute involved, familiar or not." Recognize these? The examples Silberman highlighted: SNF (spent nuclear fuel); HLW (high-level radioactive waste); and NWF (Nuclear Waste Fund).
Silberman's frustration with truncation (FWT, for short?) hasn't waned. At a hearing today, in an unrelated dispute about nuclear energy, the judge directed his criticism to a senior trial lawyer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (The case was Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)
I was tempted to make this an AFZ, BOTOH -- CMW -- why bother? DILLIGAS?
