From the makers of Detective Comics Comics' Detective Comics comic

So I was just reading an article about how DC are yet again restarting all their comics from issue one to dig themselves out of the incomprehensible jumble that comes from incessant cross-overs, team-ups and messing with alternate universes and suchlike. I was reading it on the official DC site. Sorry, I was reading it on the official DC Comics site.

DC Comics. That'd make it Detective Comics Comics. That's what they actually refer to themselves as. They've completely missed the point of their own initials. (Plus they actually publish a comic called Detective Comics, which just confuses matters.)

I was reliably informed the other day that this is referred to as RAS Syndrome, or Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome (see what they did there?). Now fair enough, I'm guilty of occasionally referring to my PIN number or CSS stylesheets. But it really, really gets my goat when a company ignores all sense and RAS-ifies itself. This goes beyond a pet peeve. It's long irked me that my beloved York is the proud owner of a … I'm getting angry just typing this … BHS Homestore. It's written there on the massive sign on the front of the shop. British Home Stores Homestore. They can't even make up their minds as to whether "home store" is one word or two.

Of course, no rant goes untweeted. Having just spewed all of the above out in a procession of exasperated tweets, I received a seemingly innocuous reply from Mr Seiz: "I hope you never find out about PHP".

So I Googled PHP.

THE P IN PHP STANDS FOR PHP.

Comments

[Luke Jones]

Don't visit this website, it'll make you go on a rampage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym

[Rob McD]

Reminds me of one of my favourite geek jokes: "Did you know the the B in Benoit B Mandelbrot stands for Benoit B Mandelbrot?"

[Gui Seiz]

i feel bad for tweeting :D

title for this should be

Non-Redundant Acronyms or GTFO

:) :) :)

[Nikki]

I was thinking "Please don't mention PHP, please don't mention PHP." And then someone told you about it, and I about died from stifling laughter (sigh, work). Now if only we could see the reaction to recursive acronyms.