This is splorp.

ISSN 1496-3221

October 23, 2005

Acronymoniously yours.

Government agencies are known for their innate ability to communicate the simplest bit of information as unabridged as possible — and Canada is absolutely no exception. Considering that all things within the mighty realm of the Canadian government must be bilingually represented, even the acronyms suffer from severe alphabetic overextension. For an example of how bureaucratic a public facing web address can get, look no further than the Tides, Currents, and Water Levels / Marées, Courants et Niveaux D’eau site run by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) / Service Hydrographique du Canada (SHC) branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) / Ministère des Pêches et Océans Canada (MPO).

http://www.lau.chs-shc.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/

Simple to type. Easy to remember. And somewhere in Ottawa, a public servant just won the interoffice pangram pool. Fortunately, there’s also a refreshingly plain-English address for this site, but guess which one shows up first in Google?

This item was posted by Grant Hutchinson.

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