While this is very often (indeed most often) a good idea, it doesn’t always work. Let me do that expansion on the headline for example:
Google’s AI Overviews Feature Is Telling Users That Secure Contain Protect Horror Fiction Entities Are Real
This does nothing to help those not already in the know of what SCP is, and, even worse, might confuse them since nobody ever really uses Secure Contain Protect like that. So you’d not help the uninitiated in the slightest and would obfuscate it for those who are initiated.
In circumstances like these a professional might put a brief blurb inline, or in a footnote, or if it’s sizable and important in a sidebar, and carry on, but in an informal, non-professional environment even that much is unlikely to be done.
In this case, SCP is more or less a name on its own. Originally, it referred to the descriptions of how a particular anomaly is to be handled and treated (Standard Containment Procedures), then as the setting got formalised, it became both the name of the SCP-Foundation and a backronym for their motto (Secure, Contain, Protect), and for referring to the anomalies (generally pronounced Scip, with individual anomalies usually referred to by their procedures’ number or some variation defined in it).
So if you’re talking about, say, SCP-173, it really is just part of the name. Dereferencing it doesn’t make much sense, since both the motto and the document don’t really fit the object.
I need someone to dereference that initialism.
In general, it’s a really great idea to be like journos and dereference initialisms on first use if they can be at all novel or ambiguous.
While this is very often (indeed most often) a good idea, it doesn’t always work. Let me do that expansion on the headline for example:
This does nothing to help those not already in the know of what SCP is, and, even worse, might confuse them since nobody ever really uses Secure Contain Protect like that. So you’d not help the uninitiated in the slightest and would obfuscate it for those who are initiated.
In circumstances like these a professional might put a brief blurb inline, or in a footnote, or if it’s sizable and important in a sidebar, and carry on, but in an informal, non-professional environment even that much is unlikely to be done.
In this case, SCP is more or less a name on its own. Originally, it referred to the descriptions of how a particular anomaly is to be handled and treated (Standard Containment Procedures), then as the setting got formalised, it became both the name of the SCP-Foundation and a backronym for their motto (Secure, Contain, Protect), and for referring to the anomalies (generally pronounced Scip, with individual anomalies usually referred to by their procedures’ number or some variation defined in it).
So if you’re talking about, say, SCP-173, it really is just part of the name. Dereferencing it doesn’t make much sense, since both the motto and the document don’t really fit the object.
not related to dereferencing but I’ve always said “ess-see-pee one seven three” and imagining it pronounced as “scip” made me take psychic damage
like it makes a ton of sense it just got me XDD
I mean, it’s probably a difference between “proper”, formal pronunciation (S C P) and informal chatting. So it’s not wrong.
SCP technically stands for Secure, Contain, Protect; however, the acronym is much more well-known.