138-584: COBOL ( / ˈ k oʊ b ɒ l , - b ɔː l / ; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative , procedural , and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers , such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. Many large financial institutions were developing new systems in
276-428: A numeronym . For example, "i18n" abbreviates " internationalization ", a computer-science term for adapting software for worldwide use; the "18" represents the 18 letters that come between the first and the last in "internationalization". Similarly, "localization" can be abbreviated "l10n"; " multilingualization " "m17n"; and " accessibility " "a11y". In addition to the use of a specific number replacing that many letters,
414-550: A portable programming language for data processing. It was originally seen as a stopgap, but the Defense Department promptly pressured computer manufacturers to provide it, resulting in its widespread adoption. It was standardized in 1968 and has been revised five times. Expansions include support for structured and object-oriented programming . The current standard is ISO / IEC 1989:2023. COBOL statements have prose syntax such as MOVE x TO y , which
552-645: A single word ("television" or "transvestite", for instance), and is in general spelled without punctuation (except in the plural). Although "PS" stands for the single English word " postscript " or the Latin postscriptum , it is often spelled with periods ("P.S.") as if parsed as Latin post scriptum instead. The slash ('/', or solidus ) is sometimes used to separate the letters in an acronym, as in "N/A" ("not applicable, not available") and "c/o" ("care of"). Inconveniently long words used frequently in related contexts can be represented according to their letter count as
690-512: A "strong anti-IBM bias" from some committee members (herself included). In one case, after Roy Goldfinger, author of the COMTRAN manual and intermediate-range committee member, attended a subcommittee meeting to support his language and encourage the use of algebraic expressions, Grace Hopper sent a memo to the short-range committee reiterating Sperry Rand's efforts to create a language based on English. In 1980, Grace Hopper commented that "COBOL 60
828-507: A 1940 translation of a novel by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger . It is an unsettled question in English lexicography and style guides whether it is legitimate to use the word acronym to describe forms that use initials but are not pronounced as a word. While there is plenty of evidence that acronym is used widely in this way, some sources do not acknowledge this usage, reserving
966-486: A demonstrable implementation, allowing supporters of a FLOW-MATIC-based COBOL to overturn the resolution. RCA representative Howard Bromberg also blocked FACT, so that RCA's work on a COBOL implementation would not go to waste. It soon became apparent that the committee was too large to make any further progress quickly. A frustrated Howard Bromberg bought a $ 15 tombstone with "COBOL" engraved on it and sent it to Charles Phillips to demonstrate his displeasure. A subcommittee
1104-625: A different meaning. Medical literature has been struggling to control the proliferation of acronyms, including efforts by the American Academy of Dermatology. Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices: for example the colors of the rainbow are ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). They are also used as mental checklists: in aviation GUMPS stands for gas-undercarriage-mixture-propeller-seat belts. Other mnemonic acronyms include CAN SLIM in finance, PAVPANIC in English grammar, and PEMDAS in mathematics. It
1242-423: A lead designer of COBOL, said Hopper "was not the mother, creator, or developer of Cobol." IBM's COMTRAN language, invented by Bob Bemer , was regarded as a competitor to FLOW-MATIC by a short-range committee made up of colleagues of Grace Hopper. Some of its features were not incorporated into COBOL so that it would not look like IBM had dominated the design process, and Jean Sammet said in 1981 that there had been
1380-781: A medial decimal point . Particularly in British and Commonwealth English , all such punctuation marking acronyms and other capitalized abbreviations is now uncommon and considered either unnecessary or incorrect. The presence of all-capital letters is now thought sufficient to indicate the nature of the UK , the EU , and the UN . Forms such as the U.S.A. for "the United States of America " are now considered to indicate American or North American English . Even within those dialects, such punctuation
1518-464: A military defense force stagnated as they focused on other concerns relevant to setting up the new government. President George Washington went to Congress to remind them of their duty to establish a military twice during this time. Finally, on the last day of the session, September 29, 1789, Congress created the War Department . The War Department handled naval affairs until Congress created
SECTION 10
#17327826860241656-572: A more robust file management system. The usefulness of the committee's work was a subject of great debate. While some members thought the language had too many compromises and was the result of design by committee , others felt it was better than the three languages examined. Some felt the language was too complex; others, too simple. Controversial features included those some considered useless or too advanced for data processing users. Such features included Boolean expressions , formulas , and table subscripts (indices). Another point of controversy
1794-407: A period when the letters are pronounced individually, as in " K.G.B. ", but not when pronounced as a word, as in " NATO ". The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the punctuation scheme. When a multiple-letter abbreviation is formed from a single word, periods are in general not used, although they may be common in informal usage. "TV", for example, may stand for
1932-405: A phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation . For some, an initialism or alphabetism , connotes this general meaning, and an acronym is a subset with a narrower definition: an initialism pronounced as a word rather than as
2070-480: A sequence of letters. In this sense, NASA / ˈ n æ s ə / is an acronym but USA / j uː ɛ s ˈ eɪ / is not. The broader sense of acronym , ignoring pronunciation, is its original meaning and in common use. Dictionary and style-guide editors dispute whether the term acronym can be legitimately applied to abbreviations which are not pronounced as words, and they do not agree on acronym spacing , casing , and punctuation . The phrase that
2208-436: A single word, such as NATO (as distinct from B-B-C )" but adds later "In everyday use, acronym is often applied to abbreviations that are technically initialisms, since they are pronounced as separate letters." The Chicago Manual of Style acknowledges the complexity ("Furthermore, an acronym and initialism are occasionally combined (JPEG), and the line between initialism and acronym is not always clear") but still defines
2346-651: A total cleanup, and, by March 1963, it was reported that COBOL's syntax was as definable as ALGOL 's, although semantic ambiguities remained. COBOL is a difficult language to write a compiler for, due to the large syntax and many optional elements within syntactic constructs, as well as the need to generate efficient code for a language with many possible data representations, implicit type conversions, and necessary set-ups for I/O operations. Early COBOL compilers were primitive and slow. A 1962 US Navy evaluation found compilation speeds of 3–11 statements per minute. By mid-1964, they had increased to 11–1000 statements per minute. It
2484-515: A twentieth-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda , an acronym for
2622-410: A whole, despite their local readability. For years, COBOL has been assumed as a programming language for business operations in mainframes, although in recent years, many COBOL operations have been moved to cloud computing . In the late 1950s, computer users and manufacturers were becoming concerned about the rising cost of programming. A 1959 survey had found that in any data processing installation,
2760-471: A word, an abbreviation is not an acronym." In contrast, some style guides do support it, whether explicitly or implicitly. The 1994 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage defends the usage on the basis of a claim that dictionaries do not make a distinction. The BuzzFeed style guide describes CBS and PBS as "acronyms ending in S". Acronymy, like retronymy , is a linguistic process that has existed throughout history but for which there
2898-677: A word. American English dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster , Dictionary.com's Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the British Oxford English Dictionary and the Australian Macquarie Dictionary all include a sense in their entries for acronym equating it with initialism , although The American Heritage Dictionary criticizes it with
SECTION 20
#17327826860243036-465: Is 95% FLOW-MATIC" and that COMTRAN had had an "extremely small" influence. Furthermore, she said that she would claim that work was influenced by both FLOW-MATIC and COMTRAN only to "keep other people happy [so they] wouldn't try to knock us out.". Features from COMTRAN incorporated into COBOL included formulas, the PICTURE clause , an improved IF statement, which obviated the need for GO TOs , and
3174-488: Is a question about how to pluralize acronyms. Often a writer will add an 's' following an apostrophe, as in "PC's". However, Kate L. Turabian 's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , writing about style in academic writings, allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" but "Ph.D.'s". The style guides of
3312-721: Is becoming increasingly uncommon. Some style guides , such as that of the BBC , no longer require punctuation to show ellipsis ; some even proscribe it. Larry Trask , American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation , states categorically that, in British English , "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete." Nevertheless, some influential style guides , many of them American , still require periods in certain instances. For example, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends following each segment with
3450-411: Is common for grammatical contractions (e.g. don't , y'all , and ain't ) and for contractions marking unusual pronunciations (e.g. a'ight , cap'n , and fo'c'sle for "all right", "captain", and "forecastle"). By the early twentieth century, it was standard to use a full stop/period/point , especially in the cases of initialisms and acronyms. Previously, especially for Latin abbreviations , this
3588-631: Is especially important for paper media, where no search utility is available to find the first use.) It also gives students a convenient review list to memorize the important acronyms introduced in a textbook chapter. Expansion at first use and abbreviation keys originated in the print era, but they are equally useful for electronic text . While acronyms provide convenience and succinctness for specialists, they often degenerate into confusing jargon . This may be intentional, to exclude readers without domain-specific knowledge. New acronyms may also confuse when they coincide with an already existing acronym having
3726-464: Is generally said as two letters, but IPsec for Internet Protocol Security is usually pronounced as / ˌ aɪ ˈ p iː s ɛ k / or / ˈ ɪ p s ɛ k / , along with variant capitalization like "IPSEC" and "Ipsec". Pronunciation may even vary within a single speaker's vocabulary, depending on narrow contexts. As an example, the database programming language SQL is usually said as three letters, but in reference to Microsoft's implementation
3864-793: Is made by any contributor or by the CODASYL COBOL Committee as to the accuracy and functioning of the programming system and language. Moreover, no responsibility is assumed by any contributor or by the committee in connection therewith. The authors and copyright holders of the copyrighted material used herein are as follows: FLOW-MATIC (trademark of Unisys Corporation ), Programming for the UNIVAC (R) I and II, Data Automation Systems, copyrighted 1958, 1959, by Unisys Corporation; IBM Commercial Translator Form No. F28-8013, copyrighted 1959 by IBM; FACT, DSI 27A5260-2760, copyrighted 1960 by Minneapolis-Honeywell. They have specifically authorized
4002-610: Is not military, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by the NSA. In the 2010 United States federal budget , the Department of Defense was allocated a base budget of $ 533.7 billion, with a further $ 75.5 billion adjustment in respect of 2009, and $ 130 billion for overseas contingencies. The subsequent 2010 Department of Defense Financial Report shows
4140-459: Is not uncommon for acronyms to be cited in a kind of false etymology , called a folk etymology , for a word. Such etymologies persist in popular culture but have no factual basis in historical linguistics , and are examples of language-related urban legends . For example, " cop " is commonly cited as being derived, it is presumed, from "constable on patrol", and " posh " from " port outward, starboard home ". With some of these specious expansions,
4278-540: Is the secretary and their deputies, including predominantly civilian staff. OSD is the principal staff element of the Secretary of Defense in the exercise of policy development, planning, resource management, fiscal and program evaluation and oversight, and interface and exchange with other U.S. federal government departments and agencies, foreign governments, and international organizations, through formal and informal processes. OSD also performs oversight and management of
COBOL - Misplaced Pages Continue
4416-415: Is traditionally pronounced like the word sequel . In writing for a broad audience, the words of an acronym are typically written out in full at its first occurrence within a given text. Expansion At First Use (EAFU) benefits readers unfamiliar with the acronym. Another text aid is an abbreviation key which lists and expands all acronyms used, a reference for readers who skipped past the first use. (This
4554-612: Is unclear who coined the name "COBOL", although Bob Bemer later claimed it had been his suggestion. In October, the intermediate-range committee received copies of the FACT language specification created by Roy Nutt . Its features impressed the committee so much that they passed a resolution to base COBOL on it. This was a blow to the short-range committee, who had made good progress on the specification. Despite being technically superior, FACT had not been created with portability in mind or through manufacturer and user consensus. It also lacked
4692-769: The Central Intelligence Agency , the National Security Council , National Security Resources Board , United States Air Force , and the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The act placed the National Military Establishment under the control of a single secretary of defense . The National Military Establishment formally began operations on September 18, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as
4830-516: The Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year." However, although acronymic words seem not to have been employed in general vocabulary before the twentieth century (as Wilton points out), the concept of their formation is treated as effortlessly understood (and evidently not novel) in an Edgar Allan Poe story of the 1830s, " How to Write a Blackwood Article ", which includes
4968-916: The Eisenhower School (ES) and the National War College (NWC). Faced with rising tensions between the Thirteen Colonies and the British government , one of the first actions taken by the First Continental Congress in September 1774 was to recommend that the colonies begin defensive military preparations. In mid-June 1775, after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War , the Second Continental Congress , recognizing
5106-623: The Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association prohibit apostrophes from being used to pluralize acronyms regardless of periods (so "compact discs" would be "CDs" or "C.D.s"), whereas The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage requires an apostrophe when pluralizing all abbreviations regardless of periods (preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's"). Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods appear especially complex: for example, "the C.D.'s' labels" (the labels of
5244-523: The Navy Department in 1798. The secretaries of each department reported directly to the president as cabinet-level advisors until 1949, when all military departments became subordinate to the Secretary of Defense. After the end of World War II , President Harry Truman proposed the creation of a unified department of national defense. In a special message to the Congress on December 19, 1945,
5382-674: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence . They fulfill the requirements of national policymakers and war planners, serve as Combat Support Agencies , and also assist and deploy alongside non-Department of Defense intelligence or law enforcement services such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation . The military services each have their intelligence elements that are distinct from but subject to coordination by national intelligence agencies under
5520-539: The Restoration witticism arranging the names of some members of Charles II 's Committee for Foreign Affairs to produce the "CABAL" ministry . OK , a term of disputed origin, dates back at least to the early nineteenth century and is now used around the world. Acronyms are used most often to abbreviate names of organizations and long or frequently referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms; some well-known examples from
5658-713: The U.S. Air Force , the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin , and the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology). The committee was chaired by Joseph Wegstein of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards. Work began by investigating data descriptions, statements, existing applications, and user experiences. The committee mainly examined the FLOW-MATIC , AIMACO , and COMTRAN programming languages. The FLOW-MATIC language
COBOL - Misplaced Pages Continue
5796-653: The University of Pennsylvania to organize a formal meeting on common business languages. Representatives included Grace Hopper (inventor of the English-like data processing language FLOW-MATIC ), Jean Sammet , and Saul Gorn . At the April meeting, the group asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to sponsor an effort to create a common business language. The delegation impressed Charles A. Phillips, director of
5934-703: The deputy secretary of defense . Secretaries of military departments, in turn, normally exercise authority over their forces by delegation through their respective service chiefs (i.e., Chief of Staff of the Army , Commandant of the Marine Corps , Chief of Naval Operations , Chief of Staff of the Air Force , and Chief of Space Operations ) over forces not assigned to a Combatant Command . Secretaries of Military Departments and service chiefs do not possess operational command authority over U.S. troops (this power
6072-518: The fiscal year 2024 (FY2024) presidential budget request was $ 842 billion. In January 2023 Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the US government would hit its $ 31.4 trillion debt ceiling on 19 January 2023; the date on which the US government would no longer be able to use extraordinary measures such as issuance of Treasury securities is estimated to be in June 2023. On 3 June 2023,
6210-480: The "belief" that the etymology is acronymic has clearly been tongue-in-cheek among many citers, as with "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" for " golf ", although many other (more credulous ) people have uncritically taken it for fact. Taboo words in particular commonly have such false etymologies: " shit " from "ship/store high in transit" or "special high-intensity training" and " fuck " from "for unlawful carnal knowledge", or "fornication under consent/command of
6348-463: The 160-character SMS limit, and to save time, acronyms such as "GF" ("girlfriend"), "LOL" ("laughing out loud"), and "DL" ("download" or "down low") have become popular. Some prescriptivists disdain texting acronyms and abbreviations as decreasing clarity, or as failure to use "pure" or "proper" English. Others point out that languages have always continually changed , and argue that acronyms should be embraced as inevitable, or as innovation that adapts
6486-461: The 18 letters between the initial "i" and the final "n"). Authors of expository writing will sometimes capitalize or otherwise distinctively format the initials of the expansion for pedagogical emphasis (for example, writing: "the onset of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)" or "the onset of c ongestive h eart f ailure (CHF)"). Capitalization like this, however, conflicts with the convention of English orthography, which generally reserves capitals in
6624-552: The ANSI committee, the CODASYL Programming Language Committee was working on improving the language. They described new versions in 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1973, including changes such as new inter-program communication, debugging, and file merging facilities, as well as improved string handling and library inclusion features. Acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of
6762-595: The Army , Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Air Force ), appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate . They have the legal authority under Title 10 of the United States Code to conduct all the affairs of their respective departments within which the military services are organized. The secretaries of the Military Departments are (by law) subordinate to the secretary of defense and (by SecDef delegation) to
6900-466: The British press may render it "Nato"), but uses lower case in " Unicef " (from "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund") because it is more than four letters, and to style it in caps might look ungainly (flirting with the appearance of "shouting capitals"). While abbreviations typically exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), this is not always
7038-603: The CIA's human intelligence efforts while also focusing on military human intelligence priorities. These agencies are directly overseen by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security . The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the Department of Defense who advise the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council , the National Security Council and
SECTION 50
#17327826860247176-860: The COBOL Maintenance Committee to answer questions from users and vendors and to improve and expand the specifications. During 1960, the list of manufacturers planning to build COBOL compilers grew. By September, five more manufacturers had joined CODASYL ( Bendix , Control Data Corporation , General Electric (GE), National Cash Register , and Philco ), and all represented manufacturers had announced COBOL compilers. GE and IBM planned to integrate COBOL into their own languages, GECOM and COMTRAN, respectively. In contrast, International Computers and Tabulators planned to replace their language, CODEL, with COBOL. Meanwhile, RCA and Sperry Rand worked on creating COBOL compilers. The first COBOL program ran on 17 August on an RCA 501. On 6 and 7 December,
7314-796: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) as the "principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense". The remaining Joint Chiefs of Staff may only have their advice relayed to the President, National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council , or the Secretary of Defense after submitting it to the CJCS. By law,
7452-528: The Data System Research Staff at the DoD, who thought that they "thoroughly understood" the DoD's problems. The DoD operated 225 computers, had 175 more on order, and had spent over $ 200 million on implementing programs to run on them. Portable programs would save time, reduce costs, and ease modernization. Charles Phillips agreed to sponsor the meeting, and tasked the delegation with drafting
7590-562: The Defense Agencies, Department of Defense Field Activities, and specialized Cross Functional Teams . OSD is a parent agency of the following defense agencies: Several defense agencies are members of the United States Intelligence Community . These are national-level intelligence services that operate under the Department of Defense jurisdiction but simultaneously fall under the authorities of
7728-523: The Department of Defense budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that
7866-474: The Department of Defense. Department of Defense manages the nation's coordinating authorities and assets in disciplines of signals intelligence , geospatial intelligence , and measurement and signature intelligence , and also builds, launches, and operates the Intelligence Community's satellite assets. Department of Defense also has its own human intelligence service , which contributes to
8004-600: The FY 2019 budget: "The overall number you often hear is $ 716 billion. That is the amount of funding for national defense, the accounting code is 050 and includes more than simply the Department of Defense. It includes, for example, the Department of Energy and others. That large a number, if you back out the $ 30 billion for non-defense agencies, you get to $ 686 billion. That is the funding for the Department of Defense, split between $ 617 billion in base and $ 69 billion in overseas contingency ". The Department of Defense budget encompasses
8142-520: The FY2018 Budget expired and the FY2019 budget came into effect. The FY2019 Budget for the Department of Defense is approximately $ 686,074,048,000 (Including Base + Overseas Contingency Operations + Emergency Funds) in discretionary spending and $ 8,992,000,000 in mandatory spending totaling $ 695,066,000,000 Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) David L. Norquist said in a hearing regarding
8280-812: The Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS ) and the Joint Staff ( JS ), Office of the Inspector General ( DODIG ), the Combatant Commands , the Military Departments ( Department of the Army (DA), Department of the Navy (DON) & Department of the Air Force (DAF)), the Defense Agencies and Department of Defense Field Activities , the National Guard Bureau (NGB), and such other offices, agencies, activities, organizations, and commands established or designated by law, or by
8418-588: The NDAA on 14 December 2023. The Senate will next undertake negotiations on supplemental spending for 2024. A government shutdown was averted on 23 March 2024 with the signing of a $ 1.2 trillion bill to cover FY2024. A 2013 Reuters investigation concluded that Defense Finance & Accounting Service , the Department of Defense's primary financial management arm, implements monthly "unsubstantiated change actions"—illegal, inaccurate "plugs"—that forcibly make DoD's books match Treasury's books. Reuters reported that
SECTION 60
#17327826860248556-1106: The National Security Agency ( NSA ), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ( NGA ), and the National Reconnaissance Office ( NRO ). Other Defense agencies include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ), the Defense Logistics Agency ( DLA ), the Missile Defense Agency ( MDA ), the Defense Health Agency ( DHA ), Defense Threat Reduction Agency ( DTRA ), the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency ( DCSA ),
8694-472: The Pentagon was the only federal agency that had not released annual audits as required by a 1992 law. According to Reuters, the Pentagon "annually reports to Congress that its books are in such disarray that an audit is impossible". In 2015, a Pentagon consulting firm performed an audit on the Department of Defense's budget. It found that there was $ 125 billion in wasteful spending that could be saved over
8832-442: The President to the Secretary of Defense, the service chief of the Unified Combatant Commander(s), and then to the unified combatant commander(s). Also provided in this legislation was a centralized research authority, the Advanced Research Projects Agency , eventually known as DARPA . The act was written and promoted by the Eisenhower administration and was signed into law on August 6, 1958. The Secretary of Defense , appointed by
8970-458: The Space Development Agency ( SDA ) and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency ( PFPA ), all of which are subordinate to the secretary of defense. Additionally, the Defense Contract Management Agency ( DCMA ) is responsible for administering contracts for the Department of Defense. Military operations are managed by eleven regional or functional unified combatant commands . The Department of Defense also operates several joint services schools, including
9108-564: The U.S. Navy, is "COMCRUDESPAC", which stands for "commander, cruisers destroyers Pacific"; it is also seen as "ComCruDesPac". Inventors are encouraged to anticipate the formation of acronyms by making new terms "YABA-compatible" ("yet another bloody acronym"), meaning the term's acronym can be pronounced and is not an offensive word: "When choosing a new name, be sure it is 'YABA-compatible'." Acronym use has been further popularized by text messaging on mobile phones with short message service (SMS), and instant messenger (IM). To fit messages into
9246-521: The U.S. government directly related to national security and the United States Armed Forces . As of November 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense is the second largest employer in the world after India (and potentially China, if including the Central Military Commission), with over 1.4 million active-duty service personnel, including soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, and guardians. The Department of Defense also maintains over 778,000 National Guard and reservists, and over 747,000 civilians, bringing
9384-425: The Unified Combatant Commands are responsible for military forces' actual operational command. Almost all operational U.S. forces are under the authority of a Unified Command. The Unified Commands are governed by a Unified Command Plan —a frequently updated document (produced by the DoD), which lays out the Command's mission, geographical/functional responsibilities, and force structure. During military operations,
9522-422: The United States , the latter of which is also the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces . Beneath the Department of Defense are three subordinate military departments: the Department of the Army , the Department of the Navy , and the Department of the Air Force . In addition, four national intelligence services are subordinate to the Department of Defense: the Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA ),
9660-442: The United States are among the " alphabet agencies " (jokingly referred to as " alphabet soup ") created under the New Deal by Franklin D. Roosevelt (himself known as "FDR"). Business and industry also coin acronyms prolifically. The rapid advance of science and technology also drives the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more pronounceable names. One representative example, from
9798-402: The United States of America Standards Institute (now ANSI ) formed groups to create standards. ANSI produced USA Standard COBOL X3.23 in August 1968, which became the cornerstone for later versions. This version was known as American National Standard (ANS) COBOL and was adopted by ISO in 1972. By 1970, COBOL had become the most widely used programming language in the world. Independently of
9936-411: The acronym may use normal case rules, e.g. it would appear generally in lower case, but with an initial capital when starting a sentence or when in a title. Once knowledge of the words underlying such an acronym has faded from common recall, the acronym may be termed an anacronym . Examples of anacronyms are the words " scuba ", " radar ", and " laser ". The word "an acro nym" should not be confused with
10074-545: The acronym stands for is called its expansion . The meaning of an acronym includes both its expansion and the meaning of its expansion. The word acronym is formed from the Greek roots akro- , meaning 'height, summit, or tip', and -nym , 'name'. This neoclassical compound appears to have originated in German , with attestations for the German form Akronym appearing as early as 1921. Citations in English date to
10212-590: The adoption of acronyms was modern warfare, with its many highly technical terms. While there is no recorded use of military acronyms dating from the American Civil War (acronyms such as "ANV" for " Army of Northern Virginia " post-date the war itself), they became somewhat common in World War I , and by World War II they were widespread even in the slang of soldiers, who referred to themselves as G.I.s . The widespread, frequent use of acronyms across
10350-486: The agenda. On 28 and 29 May 1959 (exactly one year after the Zürich ALGOL 58 meeting), a meeting was held at the Pentagon to discuss the creation of a common programming language for business. It was attended by 41 people and was chaired by Phillips. The Department of Defense was concerned about whether it could run the same data processing programs on different computers. FORTRAN , the only mainstream language at
10488-584: The allocation for the Department of Defense was $ 585 billion, the highest level of budgetary resources among all federal agencies, and this amounts to more than one-half of the annual federal expenditures in the United States federal budget discretionary budget . On September 28, 2018, President Donald Trump signed the Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019 (H.R.6157) into law. On September 30, 2018,
10626-506: The apostrophe should be reserved for the possessive ("the TV's antenna"). In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the acronym is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE.UU. , for Estados Unidos ('United States'). This old convention is still sometimes followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as SS. for Saints , pp. for
10764-438: The budgeted global military spending – more than the next 7 largest militaries combined. By 2019, the 27th secretary of defense had begun a line-by-line review of the defense budget; in 2020 the secretary identified items amounting to $ 5.7 billion, out of a $ 106 billion subtotal (the so-called "fourth estate" agencies such as missile defense, and defense intelligence, amounting to 16% of the defense budget), He will re-deploy to
10902-1163: The case. Sometimes function words are included to make a pronounceable acronym, such as CORE ( Congress of Racial Equality ). Sometimes the letters representing these words are written in lower case, such as in the cases of "TfL" (" Transport for London ") and LotR ( The Lord of the Rings ); this usually occurs when the acronym represents a multi-word proper noun. Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal ) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters, as in "4GL" (" fourth generation language ") or "G77" (" Group of 77 "). Large numbers may use metric prefixes , as with " Y2K " for "Year 2000". Exceptions using initials for numbers include " TLA " ("three-letter acronym/abbreviation") and "GoF" (" Gang of Four "). Abbreviations using numbers for other purposes include repetitions, such as " A2DP " ("Advanced Audio Distribution Profile"), " W3C " ("World Wide Web Consortium"), and T3 ( Trends, Tips & Tools for Everyday Living ); pronunciation, such as " B2B " ("business to business"); and numeronyms , such as "i18n" ("internationalization"; "18" represents
11040-473: The chain of command runs from the president to the secretary of defense to the combatant commanders of the Combatant Commands. As of 2019 , the United States has eleven Combatant Commands, organized either on a geographical basis (known as " area of responsibility ", AOR) or on a global, functional basis: Department of Defense spending in 2017 was 3.15% of GDP and accounted for about 38% of
11178-430: The chairman has to present that advice whenever he is presenting his own. The chain of command goes from the president to the secretary of defense to the commanders of the Combatant Commands . Goldwater–Nichols also created the office of vice-chairman, and the chairman is now designated as the principal military adviser to the secretary of defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and to
11316-413: The compact discs). In some instances, however, an apostrophe may increase clarity: for example, if the final letter of an abbreviation is "S", as in "SOS's" (although abbreviations ending with S can also take "-es", e.g. "SOSes"), or when pluralizing an abbreviation that has periods. A particularly rich source of options arises when the plural of an acronym would normally be indicated in a word other than
11454-564: The contrived acronym "P.R.E.T.T.Y.B.L.U.E.B.A.T.C.H." The use of Latin and Neo-Latin terms in vernaculars has been pan-European and pre-dates modern English. Some examples of acronyms in this class are: The earliest example of a word derived from an acronym listed by the OED is "abjud" (now " abjad "), formed from the original first four letters of the Arabic alphabet in the late eighteenth century. Some acrostics pre-date this, however, such as
11592-491: The debt ceiling was suspended until 2025. The $ 886 billion National Defense Authorization Act is facing reconciliation of the House and Senate bills after passing both houses 27 July 2023; the conferees have to be chosen, next. As of September 2023, a Continuing resolution is needed to prevent a Government shutdown . A shutdown was avoided on 30 September for 45 days (until 17 November 2023), with passage of
11730-438: The department were streamlined while still maintaining the ordinary jurisdiction of the Military Departments to organize, train, and equip their associated forces. The Act clarified the overall decision-making authority of the secretary of defense concerning these subordinate Military Departments. It more clearly defined the operational chain of command over U.S. military forces (created by the military departments) as running from
11868-438: The dictionary entries and style guide recommendations regarding the term acronym through the twentieth century did not explicitly acknowledge or support the expansive sense. The Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage from 1994 is one of the earliest publications to advocate for the expansive sense, and all the major dictionary editions that include a sense of acronym equating it with initialism were first published in
12006-465: The entire activity the Committee on Data Systems Languages , or CODASYL , and to form an executive committee. The short-range committee members represented six computer manufacturers and three government agencies. The computer manufacturers were Burroughs Corporation , IBM , Minneapolis-Honeywell (Honeywell Labs), RCA , Sperry Rand , and Sylvania Electric Products . The government agencies were
12144-664: The exclusive sense for acronym and its earliest citation was from 1943. In early December 2010, Duke University researcher Stephen Goranson published a citation for acronym to the American Dialect Society e-mail discussion list which refers to PGN being pronounced "pee-gee-enn", antedating English language usage of the word to 1940. Linguist Ben Zimmer then mentioned this citation in his December 16, 2010 " On Language " column about acronyms in The New York Times Magazine . By 2011,
12282-482: The executive committee on 4 September. They fell short of expectations: Joseph Wegstein noted that "it contains rough spots and requires some additions," and Bob Bemer later described them as a "hodgepodge." The committee was given until December to improve it. At a mid-September meeting, the committee discussed the new language's name. Suggestions included "BUSY" (Business System), "INFOSYL" (Information System Language), and "COCOSYL" (Common Computer Systems Language). It
12420-763: The final word if spelled out in full. A classic example is "Member of Parliament", which in plural is "Members of Parliament". It is possible then to abbreviate this as "M's P", which was fairly common in mid-twentieth-century Australian news writing (or similar ), and used by former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley . This usage is less common than forms with "s" at the end, such as "MPs", and may appear dated or pedantic. In common usage, therefore, "weapons of mass destruction" becomes "WMDs", "prisoners of war" becomes "POWs", and "runs batted in" becomes "RBIs". Abbreviations that come from single, rather than multiple, words – such as "TV" ("television") – are usually pluralized without apostrophes ("two TVs"); most writers feel that
12558-464: The first letter of acronyms, reserving all-caps styling for initialisms, writing the pronounced acronyms "Nato" and "Aids" in mixed case, but the initialisms "USA" and "FBI" in all caps. For example, this is the style used in The Guardian , and BBC News typically edits to this style (though its official style guide, dating from 2003, still recommends all-caps ). The logic of this style is that
12696-519: The first secretary of defense. The National Military Establishment was renamed the "Department of Defense" on August 10, 1949, and absorbed the three cabinet-level military departments, in an amendment to the original 1947 law. The renaming is alleged to be due to the Establishment's abbreviation, NME, being pronounced "enemy". Under the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 ( Pub. L. 85–599 ), channels of authority within
12834-404: The jurisdiction of other congressional committees. The Department of Defense is unique because it is one of the few federal entities where the majority of its funding falls into the discretionary category. The majority of the entire federal budget is mandatory, and much of the discretionary funding in the budget consists of DoD dollars. * Numbers may not add due to rounding As of 10 March 2023
12972-435: The king". In English, abbreviations have previously been marked by a wide variety of punctuation . Obsolete forms include using an overbar or colon to show the ellipsis of letters following the initial part. The forward slash is still common in many dialects for some fixed expressions—such as in w/ for "with" or A/C for " air conditioning "—while only infrequently being used to abbreviate new terms. The apostrophe
13110-500: The label "usage problem". However, many English language dictionaries, such as the Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary , Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary , Macmillan Dictionary , Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English , New Oxford American Dictionary , Webster's New World Dictionary , and Lexico from Oxford University Press do not acknowledge such a sense. Most of
13248-476: The language as late as 2006, but most programming in COBOL today is purely to maintain existing applications. Programs are being moved to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages, or replaced with other software. COBOL was designed in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC , designed by Grace Hopper . It was created as part of a U.S. Department of Defense effort to create
13386-416: The language should make maximal use of English, be capable of change, be machine-independent, and be easy to use, even at the expense of power. The meeting resulted in the creation of a steering committee and short, intermediate, and long-range committees. The short-range committee was given until September (three months) to produce specifications for an interim language, which would then be improved upon by
13524-836: The language to changing circumstances. In this view, the modern practice is just the "proper" English of the current generation of speakers, much like the earlier abbreviation of corporation names on ticker tape or newspapers. Exact pronunciation of "word acronyms" (those pronounced as words rather than sounded out as individual letters) often vary by speaker population. These may be regional, occupational, or generational differences, or simply personal preference. For instance, there have been decades of online debate about how to pronounce GIF ( / ɡ ɪ f / or / dʒ ɪ f / ) and BIOS ( / ˈ b aɪ oʊ s / , / ˈ b aɪ oʊ z / , or / ˈ b aɪ ɒ s / ). Similarly, some letter-by-letter initialisms may become word acronyms over time, especially in combining forms: IP for Internet Protocol
13662-447: The latest Center for Effective Government analysis of 15 federal agencies which receive the most Freedom of Information Act requests, published in 2015 (using 2012 and 2013 data, the most recent years available), the DoD earned 61 out of a possible 100 points, a D− grade. While it had improved from a failing grade in 2013, it still had low scores in processing requests (55%) and disclosure rules (42%). The organization and functions of
13800-578: The majority of the National Defense Budget of approximately $ 716.0 billion in discretionary spending and $ 10.8 billion in mandatory spending for a $ 726.8 billion total. Of the total, $ 708.1 billion falls under the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Armed Services and Senate Armed Services Committee and is subject to authorization by the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The remaining $ 7.9 billion falls under
13938-497: The middle of sentences for proper nouns; when following the AMA Manual of Style , this would instead be rendered as "the onset of congestive heart failure (CHF)". United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense ( DoD , USDOD , or DOD ) is an executive branch department of the federal government of the United States charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of
14076-589: The modernization of hypersonics, artificial intelligence, and missile defense. Beyond 2021 the 27th secretary of defense is projecting the need for yearly budget increases of 3 to 5 percent to modernize. The Department of Defense accounts for the majority of federal discretionary spending. In FY 2017, the Department of Defense budgeted spending accounted for 15% of the U.S. federal budget, and 49% of federal discretionary spending , which represents funds not accounted for by pre-existing obligations. However, this does not include many military-related items that are outside
14214-466: The more general "x" can be used to replace an unspecified number of letters. Examples include "Crxn" for "crystallization" and the series familiar to physicians for history , diagnosis , and treatment ("hx", "dx", "tx"). Terms relating to a command structure may also sometimes use this formatting, for example gold, silver, and bronze levels of command in UK policing being referred to as Gx, Sx, and Bx. There
14352-658: The necessity of having a national army that could move about and fight beyond the boundaries of any particular colony, organized the Continental Army on June 14, 1775. This momentous event is commemorated in the U.S. annually as Flag Day . Later that year, Congress would charter the Continental Navy on October 13, and the Continental Marines on November 10. Upon the seating of the 1st U.S. Congress on March 4, 1789, legislation to create
14490-579: The next five years without layoffs or reduction in military personnel. In 2016, The Washington Post uncovered that rather than taking the advice of the auditing firm, senior defense officials suppressed and hid the report from the public to avoid political scrutiny. In June 2016, the Office of the Inspector General released a report stating that the Army made $ 6.5 trillion in wrongful adjustments to its accounting entries in 2015. The Department of Defense failed its fifth audit in 2022, and could not account for more than 60% of its $ 3.5 trillion in assets. In
14628-463: The other committees. Their official mission, however, was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing programming languages; it did not explicitly direct them to create a new language. The deadline was met with disbelief by the short-range committee. One member, Betty Holberton , described the three-month deadline as "gross optimism" and doubted that the language really would be a stopgap. The steering committee met on 4 June and agreed to name
14766-729: The plural of 'pages', or mss. for manuscripts . The most common capitalization scheme seen with acronyms is all-uppercase ( all caps ). Small caps are sometimes used to make the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of some American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today , is to use small caps for acronyms longer than three letters; thus "U.S." and " FDR " in normal caps, but " nato " in small caps. The acronyms " AD " and " BC " are often smallcapped as well, as in: "From 4004 bc to ad 525 ". Where an acronym has linguistically taken on an identity as regular word,
14904-544: The president cited wasteful military spending and interdepartmental conflicts. Deliberations in Congress went on for months focusing heavily on the role of the military in society and the threat of granting too much military power to the executive. On July 26, 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , which set up a unified military command known as the National Military Establishment and created
15042-608: The president following U.S. Senate confirmation. Each of the individual Military Service Chiefs, outside their Joint Chiefs of Staff obligations, works directly for the secretary of the military department concerned: the Secretary of the Army , Secretary of the Navy , and Secretary of the Air Force . Following the Goldwater–Nichols Act in 1986, the Joint Chiefs of Staff no longer maintained operational command authority individually or collectively. The act designated
15180-559: The president on military matters. The composition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is defined by statute and consists of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (VCJCS), senior enlisted advisor to the chairman (SEAC), the Military Service chiefs from the Army , Marine Corps , Navy , Air Force , and Space Force , in addition to the chief of National Guard Bureau , all appointed by
15318-478: The president or by the secretary of defense. Department of Defense Directive 5100.01 describes the organizational relationships within the department and is the foundational issuance for delineating the major functions of the department. The latest version, signed by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in December 2010, is the first major re-write since 1987. The Office of the Secretary of Defense ( OSD )
15456-470: The president with the advice and consent of the Senate , is by federal law ( 10 U.S.C. § 113 ) the head of the Department of Defense, "the principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to Department of Defense", and has "authority, direction, and control over the Department of Defense". Because the Constitution vests all military authority in Congress and the president,
15594-570: The president. The Joint Staff (JS) is a headquarters staff at the Pentagon made up of personnel from all five services that assist the chairman and vice chairman in discharging their duties. It is managed by the Director of the Joint Staff (DJS) who is a lieutenant general or vice admiral . There are three military departments within the Department of Defense: The Military Departments are each headed by their secretary (i.e., Secretary of
15732-479: The programming cost US$ 800,000 on average and that translating programs to run on new hardware would cost US$ 600,000. At a time when new programming languages were proliferating , the same survey suggested that if a common business-oriented language were used, conversion would be far cheaper and faster. On 8 April 1959, Mary K. Hawes , a computer scientist at Burroughs Corporation , called a meeting of representatives from academia, computer users, and manufacturers at
15870-483: The pronunciation is reflected graphically by the capitalization scheme. However, it conflicts with conventional English usage of first-letter upper-casing as a marker of proper names in many cases; e.g. AIDS stands for acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome which is not a proper name, while Aids is in the style of one. Some style manuals also base the letters' case on their number. The New York Times , for example, keeps "NATO" in all capitals (while several guides in
16008-685: The publication of the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary added the expansive sense to its entry for acronym and included the 1940 citation. As the Oxford English Dictionary structures the senses in order of chronological development, it now gives the "initialism" sense first. English language usage and style guides which have entries for acronym generally criticize the usage that refers to forms that are not pronounceable words. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage says that acronym "denotes abbreviations formed from initial letters of other words and pronounced as
16146-490: The same COBOL program (albeit with minor changes) ran on an RCA computer and a Remington-Rand Univac computer, demonstrating that compatibility could be achieved. The relative influence of the languages that were used is still indicated in the recommended advisory printed in all COBOL reference manuals: COBOL is an industry language and is not the property of any company or group of companies, or of any organization or group of organizations. No warranty, expressed or implied,
16284-470: The sides of railroad cars (e.g., "Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad" → "RF&P"); on the sides of barrels and crates; and on ticker tape and newspaper stock listings (e.g. American Telephone and Telegraph Company → AT&T). Some well-known commercial examples dating from the 1890s through 1920s include " Nabisco " ("National Biscuit Company"), " Esso " (from "S.O.", from " Standard Oil "), and " Sunoco " ("Sun Oil Company"). Another field for
16422-587: The standard specifies 43 statements, 87 functions, and just one class. Academic computer scientists were generally uninterested in business applications when COBOL was created and were not involved in its design; it was (effectively) designed from the ground up as a computer language for business, with an emphasis on inputs and outputs, whose only data types were numbers and strings of text. COBOL has been criticized for its verbosity, design process, and poor support for structured programming . These weaknesses result in monolithic programs that are hard to comprehend as
16560-474: The statutory authority of the secretary of defense is derived from their constitutional authority. Since it is impractical for either Congress or the president to participate in every piece of Department of Defense affairs, the secretary of defense and the secretary's subordinate officials generally exercise military authority. The Department of Defense is composed of the Office of the Secretary of Defense ( OSD ),
16698-476: The term acronym only for forms pronounced as a word, and using initialism or abbreviation for those that are not. Some sources acknowledge the usage, but vary in whether they criticize or forbid it, allow it without comment, or explicitly advocate it. Some mainstream English dictionaries from across the English-speaking world affirm a sense of acronym which does not require being pronounced as
16836-502: The terms as mutually exclusive. Other guides outright deny any legitimacy to the usage: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words says "Abbreviations that are not pronounced as words (IBM, ABC, NFL) are not acronyms; they are just abbreviations." Garner's Modern American Usage says "An acronym is made from the first letters or parts of a compound term. It's read or spoken as a single word, not letter by letter." The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says "Unless pronounced as
16974-418: The time, lacked the features needed to write such programs. Representatives enthusiastically described a language that could work in a wide variety of environments, from banking and insurance to utilities and inventory control. They agreed unanimously that more people should be able to program and that the new language should not be restricted by the limitations of contemporary technology. A majority agreed that
17112-456: The total budgetary resources for fiscal year 2010 were $ 1.2 trillion. Of these resources, $ 1.1 trillion were obligated and $ 994 billion were disbursed, with the remaining resources relating to multi-year modernization projects requiring additional time to procure. After over a decade of non-compliance , Congress has established a deadline of Fiscal year 2017 for the Department of Defense to achieve audit readiness . In 2015
17250-479: The total to over 2.91 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia , just outside Washington, D.C. , the Department of Defense's stated mission is "to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security". The Department of Defense is headed by the secretary of defense , a cabinet-level head who reports directly to the president of
17388-570: The twenty-first century. The trend among dictionary editors appears to be towards including a sense defining acronym as initialism : the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added such a sense in its 11th edition in 2003, and both the Oxford English Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary added such senses in their 2011 editions. The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary only included
17526-543: The use of this material, in whole or in part, in the COBOL specifications. Such authorization extends to the reproduction and use of COBOL specifications in programming manuals or similar publications. It is rather unlikely that Cobol will be around by the end of the decade. Anonymous, June 1960 Many logical flaws were found in COBOL 60 , leading General Electric's Charles Katz to warn that it could not be interpreted unambiguously. A reluctant short-term committee performed
17664-536: The whole range of linguistic registers is relatively new in most languages, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-twentieth century. As literacy spread and technology produced a constant stream of new and complex terms, abbreviations became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common. In English, acronyms pronounced as words may be
17802-425: The word " an achro nym ", which is a type of misnomer. Words derived from an acronym by affixing are typically expressed in mixed case, so the root acronym is clear. For example, "pre-WWII politics", "post-NATO world", " DNase ". In some cases a derived acronym may also be expressed in mixed case. For example, " messenger RNA " and " transfer RNA " become "mRNA" and "tRNA". Some publications choose to capitalize only
17940-399: Was designed to be self-documenting and highly readable. However, it is verbose and uses over 300 reserved words compared to the succinct and mathematically inspired syntax of other languages. The COBOL code is split into four divisions (identification, environment, data, and procedure), containing a rigid hierarchy of sections, paragraphs, and sentences. Lacking a large standard library ,
18078-511: Was done with a full space between every full word (e.g. A. D. , i. e. , and e. g. for " Anno Domini ", " id est ", and " exempli gratia "). This even included punctuation after both Roman and Arabic numerals to indicate their use in place of the full names of each number (e.g. LII. or 52. in place of "fifty-two" and "1/4." or "1./4." to indicate "one-fourth"). Both conventions have fallen out of common use in all dialects of English, except in places where an Arabic decimal includes
18216-678: Was formed to analyze existing languages and was made up of six individuals: The subcommittee did most of the work creating the specification, leaving the short-range committee to review and modify their work before producing the finished specification. The specifications were approved by the executive committee on 8 January 1960, and sent to the government printing office, which printed them as COBOL 60 . The language's stated objectives were to allow efficient, portable programs to be easily written, to allow users to move to new systems with minimal effort and cost, and to be suitable for inexperienced programmers. The CODASYL Executive Committee later created
18354-449: Was little to no naming , conscious attention, or systematic analysis until relatively recent times. Like retronymy, it became much more common in the twentieth century than it had formerly been. Ancient examples of acronymy (before the term "acronym" was invented) include the following: During the mid- to late nineteenth century, acronyms became a trend among American and European businessmen: abbreviating corporation names, such as on
18492-430: Was observed that increasing memory would drastically increase speed and that compilation costs varied wildly: costs per statement were between $ 0.23 and $ 18.91. In late 1962, IBM announced that COBOL would be their primary development language and that development of COMTRAN would cease. The COBOL specification was revised three times in the five years after its publication. COBOL-60 was replaced in 1961 by COBOL-61. This
18630-477: Was particularly influential because it had been implemented and because AIMACO was a derivative of it with only minor changes. FLOW-MATIC's inventor, Grace Hopper, also served as a technical adviser to the committee. FLOW-MATIC's major contributions to COBOL were long variable names, English words for commands, and the separation of data descriptions and instructions. Hopper is sometimes called "the mother of COBOL" or "the grandmother of COBOL", although Jean Sammet ,
18768-536: Was stripped from them in the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 ), and instead, Military Departments are tasked solely with "the training, provision of equipment, and administration of troops." A unified combatant command is a military command composed of personnel/equipment from at least two Military Departments, which has a broad/continuing mission. These military departments are responsible for equipping and training troops to fight, while
18906-564: Was then replaced by the COBOL-61 Extended specifications in 1963, which introduced the sort and report writer facilities. The added facilities corrected flaws identified by Honeywell in late 1959 in a letter to the short-range committee. COBOL Edition 1965 brought further clarifications to the specifications and introduced facilities for handling mass storage files and tables . Efforts began to standardize COBOL to overcome incompatibilities between versions. In late 1962, both ISO and
19044-505: Was whether to make keywords context-sensitive and the effect that would have on readability. Although context-sensitive keywords were rejected, the approach was later used in PL/I and partially in COBOL from 2002. Little consideration was given to interactivity , interaction with operating systems (few existed at that time), and functions (thought of as purely mathematical and of no use in data processing). The specifications were presented to
#23976