TLA's gone FUBAR

I cringe every time I hear someone in power, or seeking political power, pronounce the word "NUCLEAR" - "new-cue-lar" -- not that it sounds any more annoying than "ex-scape" as the pronunciation for "ESCAPE" or the possibly the most commonly mispronounced month of "FEBRUARY" (so many of us have dropped the first "R"). But, perhaps because so much is riding on the handling of all things nuclear, one hopes that people handling those things have a grasp of the fundamentals. To make an analogy, would you trust anyone who told you they were a "lib-arian"?? (Perhaps they just started last "Febuary!")

But what's got me started today is the "TLA" — and even as what I've poked into this blog rings through your mind in your own voice (or what you imagine mine to be) you might be thinking:
TLA- Three letter....
Abbreviation? Acronym?

Just another observation, but I am hearing people use the word "acronym" in place of "abbreviation" - when the two are entirely different things!

When you refer to standard operating proceedure as "SOP" — (ess - oh - pea) - you've used a three letter ABBREVIATION.
On the other hand, when you refer to a police officer as a "COP" -- you've used a three letter ACRONYM. Cop is supposedly short for "constable on patrol," although I think I may have been told that by a law enforcement officer (often referred to as LEO's ... another acronym) who simply preferred that to being called a "pig" — the latter being neither an acronym or abbreviation, but simply insulting.

What's really funny about people referring to three-letter-abbreviations as three-letter-acronyms is that they're just as likely to be more or less than three letters as an actual acronym.

I guess fair is fair, if we're going to play with what the "A" in TLA means, we might as well mess with the T and the L. Can't PS3 be the TLA for the Sony video game system?

I guess we're all comfortable referring to the highways by their TNA's, but that sounds pretty suspect. I am not sure I want to have a conversation with my kids about TNA's until well after they should have already received their drivers' licenses... if ever.
This raises a lot of issues. Or is this TMI?