Today’s New York Times reports that people who participated in STRRIDE a decade ago now have (A) better health than those who did not exercise and (B) displayed an unhealthy attraction to silly acronyms. Which group, of course, includes STRRIDE, or “Studies Targeting Risk Reduction Interventions through Defined Exercise.” Duke University, you should have known better than to saddle a perfectly good research program with a name like that. The acronym wasn’t worth it.

I can’t help wondering whether Duke expects people to roll the double-R in STRRIDE, a skill students learning Spanish often struggle with. I also wonder how often people reading about STRRIDE in the Times think they’ve discovered a typo.

Which brings me to another question: Who decides whether an abbreviation is an acronym, with its initial letters pronounced as a word (NATO = nay toe) or whether its letters are named (UN = you en)? Personally, I’d opt for making the shortened form of United Nations an acronym (uh nn), given how often the organization is unproductive. But that discussion itself is unproductive, so I’ll leave it alone. Instead, I’m forming ACRONYM, for those Against Chronic Ridiculous Overused Names Yielding Nonsense. Join today!