In our reading, we see that when many people write they often use special abbreviations called initialisms (sometimes called alphabetisms). It can be a bit baffling and bothersome to look up the definition of the initialism in order to get the full understanding of what you are reading. A well-read person is familiar with many of these special abbreviations, especially ones used in the jargon of their occupation. Our non-static language holds thousands upon thousands of these short ways to write words.