In Journalism school, they taught us to always spell out the first usage of any acronym.

That's what is SUPPOSED to be done in the tech industry. But I have found that many people creating documentation like to throw around acronyms and assume that everyone knows what they stand for. Like a team I worked with that was genuinely surprised to find out that most users didn't automatically parse "Commerce Server Staging" when they read "CSS".

Yeah that's cascading styles sheets to me!!

Even within the same field, acronyms can be inconsistent. I learned MOS in film school to mean "motor only shot" (i.e., no sound). But on a news shot sheet MOS means Man On Street (as in interview). Took me ages to figure that out.

That's what is SUPPOSED to be done in the tech industry

I think some of the acronyms have reached the point where spelling them out doesn't help anyone. I mean, if I wrote out HyperText Markup Language or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, people would be all "What is she talking about?" where HTML or https would send them to their reflexive comfortable place.

I think some of the acronyms have reached the point where spelling them out doesn't help anyone.

This is very true. But trying to figure out the balance between "Everyone knows what that means" and "Let's just assume everyone knows what that means and no one on the team wants to ask and possibly expose their ignorance" is frustrating.

People are totally just lazy most of the time when they don't define acronyms.

(Yes, I am possibly a little biased.)

People are totally just lazy most of the time when they don't define acronyms.

QFT

LOL

FTW

Which everyone knows means: "FUT THE WHUCK!"