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Comment by thesuitonym | Hacker News Reader

My only complaint with it is that they use the acronym UCL without defining it.

Your complaint is valid, despite the fact this article is a press release/byline being republished from University College London. UCL doesn't even enumerate (expand? is there an alphabetic variant of "enumerate"?) the acronym on its home page: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/

>expand? is there an alphabetic variant of "enumerate"?

In this context it would be either "expand" or "explicitate" (because the operators thought the meaning was so obvious that leaving it implicit was enough).

I would use "elucidate" first and foremost, but "decipher" or "unravel" also work.

Technically the full name is on the homepage if you look at the footer, which has the full address. Looking around the website, they seem to take the branding seriously as being UCL, which is less generic than the full name which looks more like a description than a name. I’ve seen other colleges do the same.

We can argue if that’s a good or bad decision, but it seems to be intentional.

UCL is a widely known acronym, like MIT.

It’s not as famous as MIT but still known to anyone in academia and most in the anglosphere.

Related: there is a small college in NYC named "LIM", which used to stand for "Laboratory Institute of Merchandising." A few years back they updated their branding and now the name quite literally stands for nothing.

They are just "LIM" now. A former acronym, reduced to a mononym.

It's the same for KFC (the fried chicken chain). It officially no longer stands for anything, they're just called KFC.

Reebok => RBK

The trend to be meaningless is a confusing decision to me. Guess it's a good thing that's not my department

Then I think they went back? At least in Australia, in 2019.

Says "Kentucky Fried Chicken" on the web site though.

https://www.kfc.com/

Yes, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) is a well known acronym. It's not a reason not define it in an article, in case other universities share the same acronym.

Oh I know you’re trying to be sarcastic but Université Catholique de Louvain has been branded UCLouvain since 2018 and its old acronym never had international traction.

Immediately under the title you will find:

> by University College London

Therefore repetition may not be necessary.

I read the parent as sarcasm and chuckled.

I understand why you complain, but UCL is obviously an acronym of a university, and most people won't care much which specific university did this. The ones that do can readily find it. I'm much more annoyed when three-letter jargon with more than one meaning is used without context.

I think this is a branding thing. They refer to themselves pretty much everywhere as "UCL".

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