"Richard Crowley" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]..
> "Jon Harris" wrote ...
>> You may be correct, but common usage seems to be to use
>> acronym for either one. In fact, I've never heard of the word
>> initialism (and neither has the MS spell-checker).
>
> I prefer Merriam-Webster as an arbiter of language
> over the MS spell-checker. www.m-w.com Handy.

Me too. My only point about the spell-checker was that initialism wasn't very
commonly used. If you look it up on M-W, you find: "an acronym formed from
initial letters"
So it doesn't appear to make the distinction between an acronym and an
initialism based on how it is pronounced.