The excitement was palpable when hundreds of CEOs, CFOs, COOs, MBAs, Ph.D.s, and experts from PR, IR, HR, and IT convened in L.A. at the seventh annual meeting of the SAP (Society of Abbreviation Professionals). I attended on a CYA assignment because this magazine's ME wanted me to decide whether we should use BPM, CPM, or EPM. I didn't get a firm answer, but I was able to cut several syllables out of the question with help from IBM, HP, AOL, BP, and GM, plus official governmental aid from the GAO, IRS, and FBI.

After debating EBPP's ABC/M effects on DSO and pros vs. cons of ASP SLAs for CPAs looking to improve the EVA of their GAAP-compliant A/R and A/P, I volunteered to MC the evening's cocktail party. Some attendees complained, but they were SOL. Partygoers who didn't go AWOL drowned their sorrows to the abbreviated musical stylings of a Western singer named ROI Rogers.

Acronyms (abbreviated code renditions of names yielding meaning) are an invention of the 20th century attributed to Bell Laboratories, which created them to keep workers abreast of weapon systems during WWII. (You may not have known that Ma Bell was involved in weapons, but I guess she was and could be a real SOB about it.) An acronym is technically a series of initials that make up something pronounceable, like RADAR, LASER, SNAFU, SWIFT, EBITDA, and KISS. Some are so perfect that we think of them not as acronyms, but rather as members of the Society of Just Plain Words. If you can find a better example here than the USA Patriot Act -- Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism -- I wouldn't want to play Scrabble with you. Abbreviations that can't be spoken as words, such as CRM, VBM, TCO, CTO, ACH, and IQ, are merely second-rate initialisms that reside in the trailer park of language.

The first attempt to define acronyms came along in 1960, when a publisher issued the "Acronyms, Initialisms, and Abbreviations Dictionary." The original AIAD had 12,000 entries. It was the IPO of acronyms. Twenty years later, the dictionary had 211,000 entries. Today, I'd guess it has 4.6 trillion, but that's a WAG.

Since 1960, acronyms have evolved to be a kind of shorthand, the verbal equivalent of a secret handshake that suggests to people in the know that you, too, are in the know, even if you secretly know that you know absolutely nothing. No wonder they're so appealing. They have reached their apex on the Internet, where people can conduct entire conversations using nothing else:

Person 1: GM!
Person 2: GM!
Person 1: WAYD?
Person 2: NADT.
Person 1: IMO, UR GR8.
Person 2: THX. CU L8R.

At the rate they're multiplying, acronyms will probably monopolize all speech within my lifetime. Soon the only question will be which to use when -- which brings us back to the BPM (business performance management), CPM (corporate performance management), EPM (enterprise performance management) debate. All three describe the same thing. As long as we agree on that, I think we'll be OK.

Dan Danbom writes humor for a number of publications. His latest book is "Humor Meets Your Workforce: Make Laughter One of Your Organization's Goals."