Office of Initialisms and Acronyms
The Illuminatia Office of Initialisms and Acronyms (OIA) is a government office operating within the Illuminatia Department of Language and Lexicology (DLL). The OIA is responsible for maintaining a registry of initialisms, acronyms, and other abbreviated collections of letters of the alphabet, numerals, and other characters for use in written and verbal communication in conjunction with the Glossa Communi language.
The OIA's purview is limited to collections of letters from the Glossa Communi alphabet that do not form actual words in the language when used as abbreviations for larger groups of words as well as actual words from the Glossa Communi lexicon when used for the purpose of communicating concepts other than the acknowledged meaning of said words so long as the word is an acronym representing parts of a group of existing words and has entered or is expected to enter popular usage. The OIA delegates all issues relating to symbols and pictographs to the Office of Glyphs and Symbols (OGS).
The Office of Initialisms and Acronyms supports the language standardization mission of the Department of Language and Lexicology by helping to ensure initialisms, acronyms, and other abbreviations remain universally understood and stable in their use and meaning within the common language.
The OIA is tasked with ensuring any given initialisms, acronym, or abbreviation has exactly one accepted meaning. The OIA safeguards Illuminatia from situations in which such an abbreviated collection of letters might gain more than one meaning, as such a circumstance could lead to confusion, miscommunication, inconvenience, economic losses, accident, or potentially more serious hazards.
The Office of Initialisms and Acronyms regularly observes the use of abbreviations and initialisms of various sorts in written and visual media, including popular informal usage, artwork, and formal publication, including a thorough monitoring of the mass media. Specialized teams within the OIA monitor technical communication, industry, and commerce to ensure new abbreviations of a highly technical nature are catalogued, verified, and standardized to avoid especially unfortunate problems.
New proposed collections of characters are registered with the OIA so that the agency can check it against existing lists to ensure the abbreviation or initialism is not already in use. The OIA regularly publishes an updated registry and makes efforts to communicate it with the general public. Media outlets subscribe to the OIA's registry to ensure they maintain correct usage of all of the initialisms, acronyms, and abbreviations that the common language has to offer.
For a fee, individuals and entities may register initialisms and acronyms with the OIA in conjunction with the Bureau of Commerce and Trade (BCT)'s Office of Intellectual Property (OIP), in order to ensure that abbreviated collections of characters can be preserved for commercial purposes.