STREET WISE
TCC's CM refers ToR to NCCC?
In news reporting, one of the rules is "be concise". Reporters need to express much in few words. And one way to make sentences as short as possible is to use abbreviations.
These days there are many abbreviations, as new organisations are constantly being created. In the business sector, the most familiar are BOT, FTI and TCC: the Bank of Thailand, the Federation of Thai Industries and the Thai Chamber of Commerce. But it can be really confusing for business people to make sense of the abbreviations frequently used by reporters in other fields. They may be familiar with NCCC (National Counter Corruption Commission), CDR (Council for Democratic Reform), or OAG (Office of Auditor-General), but it would be difficult to make sense of AEC (Assets Examination Committee) or OCPB (the Office of Consumer Protection Board). Stock investors may also be confused when reading an article in the local news section which carries "CNS" in its headline. To them, CNS can be nothing but a securities company, abbreviated from Capital Nomura Securities. In fact, it should be spelt out as the Council for National Security. And now, a month after the coup, we have a new abbreviation - NLA, which stands for the National Legislative Assembly. Indeed, things become even more confusing when newspapers use abbreviations in headlines. Putting abbreviations in headlines is really popular among Thai-language newspapers. They abbreviate even the titles. For example, prathan - "chairman" in English - is abbreviated as Por Thor. What if I abbreviated chairman as "CM" and wrote a headline: "CM of AEC reveals assets probe facts"? That is what Thai newspapers do. I'm curious if our readers would mind if The Nation did the same.
achara_d@nationgroup.com
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