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A few years ago I had to go to a ‘team-building away-day’. We all trooped into this conference room and helped ourselves to meagre cupfuls of cheap, weak coffee and miniature chocolate croissants. Then some guy in a loud silky shirt and a wacky tie introduced himself. He told us the day was going to be enormous fun (he turned out to be wrong about that) and then he started talking about “working smart”.

Of course, I had to grip the sides of my chair to stop myself from shouting “smartLY”. And at first I thought he was talking about ironing clothes. It was one of those situations where I didn’t understand the words.

He said:

“Of course we all know about working smart. Don’t we?”

Not a peep. Everyone sat there chewing on the free miniature croissants.

He reminded us that SMART stood for ‘Simple, Manageable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely’. Then he asked with a smirk on his shiny, happy face:

“But why not work smartER?”

I wanted to scream and felt immediately depressed. Of course I didn’t say that no self-respecting subeditor could ever ‘work smarter’, or that it was almost as ridiculous as Apple telling people to ‘think different’ all those years ago. (No wonder they lost out to PCs.)

No, instead I just winced at his Power Point presentation showing us that SMARTER is the same as SMART, but with ‘Extending, Rewarding’ tacked onto the end.

I wanted to ask why. Was it because someone happened to notice that all the words that summed up brilliant work could make the acronym SMARTER? Or was it really because someone – probably a management consultant – thought:

“Hey, ‘think different’ sounds really catchy. Adverbs are for losers. I’m going to charge people for telling them to ‘work smart’, and I’m going to get one up on Apple Mac too – I’m going to turn my strapline into a meaningful acronym.”

Not that I’m cynical, or bitter or anything, but I bet this management consultant then smirked and said:

“That will really upset editorial staff everywhere.”

Well, Smartarse, not so fast. Because the trouble with acronyms is they mean so much – so much – to those who invent them, and nothing at all to other people. So all those people you’re bullying into working ‘smart’ are likely to get confused.

SMART can also mean:

• Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology
• System to Manage Accutane Related Teratogenicity
• Satellite Mutual Aid Radio Talkgroup

I know this because I’ve found a very entertaining website: the Acronyms Free Dictionary.

You can put an acronym into the search engine and see how pointless and meaningless most of them turn out to be. Some of them don’t even bother being true to the letters in the acronym.

Take SMART for example. ‘Soldiers Manual, Army Training’and ‘Small Motor Aerospace Technology’ should both be SMAT. And surely ‘Sustainable Multi Species Agricultural Resource User Trial’ should be SMSARUT?

And whatever you do, don’t get your SWAT teams confused. I doubt whether ‘Soldiers With Apostolic Truth’ would want to be confused with the ‘Sex Workers’ Alliance of Toronto’ or vice versa. But people never think about these potential confusions when they adopt an acronym.

In fact, they don’t think at all. That’s why you get acronyms like TRANSEX for ‘Training System Exerciser’ and the very unfortunate BUFFALO for ‘Burnley Food and Fitness Aimed at Lowering Obesity’.