I’ve used the term T.I.S. or Triple Initial Syndrome for years to refer to people’s seeming natural gravitation to using three initials. It appears there is something soothing about three letters places together. It’s sufficiently long to convey actual information but not too long as be unwieldy. I was searching the term the other day and only found a handful of responsive web pages. All of them, perhaps not coincidentally, stem from old school punk bands that fell prey to the syndrome. There are a number of bands than I remember quite vividly from my punk days: C.O.C., D.R.I, M.D.C., G.B.H.. Thinking back, the I initially heard the term T.I.S. from a punk friend of mine back in the 80’s. Clearly this was a term that developed back that I had expected had reached a more mainstream audience but apparently had not. I’ve been using it in reference to corporate America’s propensity for such initialisms for years. It seems almost every conceivable three letter combination has some acknowledged meaning to some corporate constituency.