Thank you, Motor City.

A big shout-out to my friend David in Detroit, who has saved me from almost certain carpal tunnel syndrome. In an e-mail yesterday, he informed me that he was not so patiently awaiting the arrival of WHOSS.

Wha?

Oh...WHOSS. I get it. It's an abbreviation for What Happened on Smith Street. To be more specific, it's an acronym. And now, Erin's insufferable, know-it-all lesson on the difference between abbreviations and acronyms (pity my poor family, won't you?):

An abbreviation is a shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, such as Dr. for Doctor, oz. for ounce, etc. for et cetera, etc.

An acronym, on the other hand, is a word formed by the first letters--or some combination of significant letters--of a group of words, such as NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NORAD for North American Air Defense Command and WHOSS for What Happened on Smith Street.

People refer to abbreviations as acronyms all the time. AT&T is not an acronym; it's an abbreviation for American Telephone and Telegraph. Of course, now it's just ATT, which could be stretched into an acronym. I could have picked a cleaner example, but where is the fun in that?

As for WHOSS, David was wondering if it should have a long or short "o" sound. Then he posited that perhaps it's best not to say it out loud. I think he's right.

[If David were a true friend, mind you, he would have supplied the abbreviation weeks ago, before I had used the book title as a page name and then hard-coded it into links all over my site.]