SARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is of course an acronym – a word coined by taking the initial letters in a phrase and using them as a new word. Acronyms are distinguished from abbreviations by being pronounced as words rather than as a series of letters (compare for example: BBC, an abbreviation, and VAT, which is used both as an acronym and an abbreviation). The process of acronym formation in English is often not as straightforward as simply combining the initial letters in a sequence of words, and can be influenced by many other factors, including orthography and ease of pronunciation. Often a name of a particular concept is chosen specially because it gives a suitable acronym. For example, many years ago the term Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was chosen for a computer programming language simply because it gave the acronym BASIC.

SARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is of course an acronym – a word coined by taking the initial letters in a phrase and using them as a new word. Acronyms are distinguished from abbreviations by being pronounced as words rather than as a series of letters (compare for example: BBC, an abbreviation, and VAT, which is used both as an acronym and an abbreviation). The process of acronym formation in English is often not as straightforward as simply combining the initial letters in a sequence of words, and can be influenced by many other factors, including orthography and ease of pronunciation. Often a name of a particular concept is chosen specially because it gives a suitable acronym. For example, many years ago the term Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was chosen for a computer programming language simply because it gave the acronym BASIC.