You ask a good question, but it probably should be directed to whoever wrote the source passage. While I guess everyone uses them, I know of at least one Chief Executive Officer (or “CEO”) who it is said pretty much doesn’t like acronyms. In fairness I have no idea how such would be addressed if there ever came a legal dispute e.g. in Construction or Contract law as to what was meant! However, I think most folks at least who have seen confusion or worse over the years know of at least some common courtesy to readers, that I have noticed is now expressed by at least a beta version of an “Internet Law Treatise” (see @ portal
“Avoid acronyms on first reference unless they are so well known that most readers will recognize the reference at first glance, such as FBI, ACLU and DOJ. Do not use periods in acronyms, except for academic degrees. Statutes acronyms should be referenced in a parenthetical, i.e. The Computer Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).”
[Based on BigInch’s question mark and his experience regarding pipes, and while his guess was my guess, I do not believe “most readers” would really know for sure, or for that matter really even have a clue as to, what is meant when now presented only with the acronyms in all caps “PROP”!]
Mr. Connor: ACLU and DOJ?
You make me curious, please forgive me my ignorance.
Prop is presumably propylene line as a medium, I don't think it is polypropylene pipe.
PE is project engineer and polyethylene ??
I'm with a company who invented a 24 A4 pages with
acronyms and abbreviations, they are just crazy.
Especially when it is in a country with more languages,
it's still more confusing.
Terrible all those acronyms and abbreviations.
PROP pipe must be when you go to the laydown yard and get an old piece of pipe then use it to "prop" up a segment of improperly supported pipe. So my answer would be it is used when the process piping is sagging and there is no #9 wire available.
ash9144 is probably right, but how about "Proposed" - it would not be unheard of to use the phrase "PROP OIL TANK DRAIN LINE" to mean proposed oil tank drain line, not propylene. Also, I would expect to see some sort of specication which clarifies the mess.
[I am guessing "American Civil Liberties Union" and "Department of Justice", with these things maybe not necessarily meaning much to those outside our little USA bureaucratic microcosm, where indeed the "internet" reaches --point well taken!]
I've seen "PROP" used to mean "proprietary;" though usually it's something like "chem skid, prop by vendor."
Over the years I've commented on many a forum thread about assuming that the TLA used in a particular industry translates well to other industries.
And europipe, your company appears to be amateurs when it comes to accronym usage -- I just checked the latest NRC accronym document and it has 292 pages! And we don't come anywhere close to the US military's use.
Patricia Lougheed
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[Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of "ETLA" (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term "SFLA" (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also YABA.
The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin, "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26[sup]3[/sup] = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.