Speaking American

American Demographics, July 1, 1998 by Kythe Heller

GOOD "PR" SKILLS

Shortcuts too often turn into long and frustrating detours. A case in point: the familiar acronym PR. Most Americans recognize PR as Public Relations, but Chileans hear Partido Radical (Radical Party), and the French hear Parti Republicaine (Republican Party). PR is the international postal code for Puerto Rico, but it's also a racial insult to Puerto Ricans in the United States.

Adding injury to insult, PR stands for partial remission or partial response in medical contexts, while in law, your personal representative replaces you if you're in PR and can't stand trial. A PR (priest) will give you your last rites, but it is your stockbroker who gives you your (PR) preferred stock.

Few people confuse priests and stockbrokers, yet context often doesn't provide enough clues to determine an acronym's meaning. Careless investors could easily mistake a profit rate for a performance ratio or a progress report, while reporters, or press representatives, may mix up a PR (press release) with public relations.

Some contexts are more obvious. In chemistry, Pr represents the chemical element praseodymium, while in royal circles, Pr. is clearly the Prince. A quick look in the Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary yields several more PR acronyms in common use: parcel receipt, paper, pair, pronoun, price, Pre-Raphaelite, pattern recognition, Protestant, painter, per, power, purchase request, and, for scholars, the medieval language Provencal.

You haven't got a prayer (PR) of getting everything right all the time, but a quick check in an acronyms dictionary may provide real insights for lay people who really want to talk to their customers.