Search Help for Acronyms

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hi,

How do I search for acronyms such as “C&O”? When I type in “C and O” or “C&O” it only shows results for “C”.

Thanks, Hansel

2

First off, C&O is not an acronym. [swg] Wellsville Addison & Galeton is an example of reporting marks (WAG) that do form an acronym, although not one that seemingly has much to do with railroading.

When I googled “C&O”, I got results for several railroad-related topics, but got even better results by using “C&O Railroad”.

Wayne

3

Sorry for the confusion, but I meant when I do a search on the MR forums, such as this one.

4

Try typing in the words spelled out: “Chesapeake & Ohio”. I got several results, but I think that you need to also be more specific in your search, such as Chesapeake & Ohio locomotives", or something similar.

Wayne

5

You’ll find the vast majority of them here: (scroll down to the alphabet in blue and look click on the letter of choice)

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/

Letters strung together that can’t be used sensibly as a word (as LASER can) are called “initialisms”. An example of an initialism is “TGIF”. C&O is merely an abbreviation of a corporate name.

-Crandell

6

…And an anacronym is an acronym where the basis for it has been lost or is unknown to most people. Like, how many know what radar (was RADAR) stands for?.. although I’m sure there is someone out there that does. Same for laser (LASER). The definition of these anacronyms doesn’t require knowing what they originally stood for. Note that we no longer capitalize the letters anymore. They have become regular words.

Mark

7

Hansel,

Two suggestions that might help:

  1. Try putting the search terms in quote marks. (“C & O” rather than C & O.) Most search engines will then look for the whole term rather than individual words.

  2. If you want to identify rep marks, try Wikipedia. Go to wikipedia.com, and search for “reporting marks”. You will get an alphabetized list. It’s pretty comprehensive and as accurate as Wikipedia usually is. (i.e, good, but not perfect.)

-Walleye