Re: What SESAC Stands For

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 09:02 PM 5/27/98 -0400, you wrote:

>    Just as what once was the Columbia Broadcasting System has been
>legally known as CBS, Inc., for several years now, what started out as
>the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers has been just plain
>ol' SESAC for decades.

Thanks for the wonderful, scholarly post--and for answering my question.

I work for an electronics trade magazine named EDN. Just like CBS and SESAC,
EDN stands for nothing now, but it once once stood for something--Electrical
Design News. Because the magazine served electronic, as opposed to
electrical engineers, the name was a misnomer from the git go (in 1956 or
1957), but it _had_ to be that way, or so I'm told. Another company had
started a magazine named Electronic Design a couple of years earlier and the
company that published EDN knew it would be sued if it tried any name that
contained the words Electronic and Design. Within five years of its
founding, EDN stopped pretending to be Electrical Design News and became
just EDN.

I am a technical editor and all of my work is edited by nontechnical
editors. Those editors are merciless in their quest for the words that go
with acronyms. I can explain what an acronym means and they don't care; they
are satisfied only if they know what the letters stand for. (Try finding a
definitive answer to what the acronym BNC, a type of coaxial connector,
stands for. A few years ago, our readers offered a series of--mostly
apocryphal--answers in our Signals and Noise column. The debate raged for
over six months, and ended without resolution. The nontechnical editors now
know enough to let BNC through without a definition, but BNC is almost unique.)

In any event, a few months ago, I overheard one of the nontechnical editors
on the phone explaining to a caller that EDN stood for ELECTRONIC Design
News. When she got off the phone, I asked her why she said that when she
knew it wasn't true and never had been. Her answer was that it was the only
explanation that the caller would have believed. When I related the story to
our publisher, he cringed. He wanted to know who the offender was. I, of
course, wouldn't identify the culprit. But the last thing the publisher
wants is to have his own people confusing EDN with Electronic Design.
Electronic Design still exists and is our principal competitor.

I guess people just don't feel comfortable with undefined acronyms. I think
that AT&T no longer officially stands for American Telephone and Telegraph,
and IBM no longer officially stands for International Business Machines, but
'most everyone knows that those are the names the initials _once_ stood for.
Somehow, that knowledge makes people feel batter. Just as the knowledge that
SESAC once stood for Society of English Stage Authors and Composers makes
_me_ feel batter. And I really have no idea why.

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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