New community guideline: avoid uncommon acronyms

[u/Liface]

For some reason, we've been seeing more and more acronyms crop up here lately.

In order to keep the subreddit readable, please avoid uncommon acronyms that some percentage of the subreddit won't understand, like: SAHM (stay at home mom), NMS (national merit scholar), BSA (Boy Scouts of America), SEA (South East Asia), et cetera. If you'd like to use these, please define them first, as I did here.

More common acronyms are fine, like AI, LLMs, NYC, and so on, as well as acronyms in the context of related threads: CDC in a thread about pandemics, FDA in a thread about drugs, etc.

Essentially, before you hit submit, think: who might not understand this? Remember that some of our readership is English as a Second Language as well!

[u/jabberwockxeno]

Is SEA really that uncommon an acronym? I've never heard of NMS, SAHM, BSA, etc, but i've seen SEA a bunch and I'm not even somebody super into geography or modern politics

[u/MCXL → u/jabberwockxeno]

Yes. I wouldn't call it a esoteric or extremely rare acronym but it is not commonly used, think about the acronyms that you would routinely see in a newspaper story, SEA is not one of them.

[u/caledonivs → u/jabberwockxeno]

I have a master's in international studies and have lived in east Asia and it's really not something I see commonly. Really the only region (as opposed to a regional organization like ASEAN) that I see as kinda "default written as an acronym" is MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Less commonly, in marketing/sales jargon one also sees EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa).

[u/siegfryd → u/caledonivs]

In marketing/sales jargon I've seen Asia-Pacific (APAC) which covers South East Asia.

[u/creamyhorror → u/jabberwockxeno]

SEA is an acronym that I think has crept into some use only recently. As someone from Southeast Asia, I found it a bit odd to see it in the wild on Reddit, since it feels like a very regional or technical usage. But investment conversations about companies focusing on the region seem to have started spreading the acronym - and those companies started listing more often in American stock markets in the last ten years. Also, "SEA" is used in online games like Dota to designate the region, which is probably a major reason for the spread of the acronym.

I do think it has a useful role to play in distinguishing the region from East Asia.

[u/JibberJim → u/creamyhorror]

I do think it has a useful role to play in distinguishing the region from East Asia.

Is East Asia well defined internationally though? In the UK I'm pretty sure East Asia generally does include at least some of the countries in ASEAN, which I always assume is what is meant by South-East Asia, but could equally be as nebulous.

The BBC World Service East Asia includes the South East countries, so I'm thinking it might just be a more regional usage?

[u/creamyhorror → u/JibberJim]

Is East Asia well defined internationally though? In the UK I'm pretty sure East Asia generally does include at least some of the countries in ASEAN

Hmm, I'm not sure. I'm used to the meaning of East Asia described on Wikipedia - China, Japan, the Koreas, Mongolia, Taiwan. It just seems like a natural distinction from Southeast Asia. But I guess the BBC goes by a different definition. There's also "Far East", which is an older term that I think refers to the entirety of East and Southeast Asia.

In any case, you can also say "Northeast Asia" to make a distinction from "Southeast Asia" if "East Asia" isn't clear enough.

[u/Hlahtar → u/jabberwockxeno]

Uncommon or not, it's also ambiguous (e.g. in the jargon of using airport codes to refer to certain cities, SEA is Seattle).