Short but not so sweet: FYI, initials can confuse

Recently a plea from a Flatchatter drew my attention to an issue that I’ve been planning to address for some time now – the overuse of initials and acronyms in our daily discussions, often leading to misunderstanding rather than clear communication.

“Sometimes am a little bamboozled by acronyms used on the Flat Chat website,” wrote our reader, called Jean. “I was wondering if would be worthwhile compiling a guide? I have made a small list as an example.”

We’ll get to that later but I take her point.  Initials and acronyms are very handy short-cuts … but only provided everybody knows what they mean.

I had reason to contact Building Commissioner David Chandler recently because his newsletter had a couple of initialised references with which I was not familiar.  In his defence, David is used to dealing with building industry professionals who would not have blinked at the initials.

Ironically, he thought I was criticising his policies rather than asking for an explanation – which just shows how much damage shortened forms can do when one end of the communication is not au fait with the lingo.

Students of language and communication will tell you that shortened forms are a way of social and professional groups communication in code.  This is both inclusive for them and exclusionary to others.  Hospital doctors apparently will write TMB on the chart of someone who is old and spent – it means “too many birthdays”.   Acronyms make us feel like we are in the know, part of an exclusive club.  They signal superior knowledge to outsiders.

Here at Flat Chat we try to help people who are relatively new to strata – and often that’s via advice from owners and residents for whom this is not their first rodeo –  but we try to avoid short forms, if we can, certainly in the initial reference.

The standard rule in journalism is to spell out the reference in full the first time and put the short form in brackets at the end, notwithstanding accepted contractions.  After that you can use the short form.

For instance, New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal might start with NSW and end with (NCAT). Thus you would get Building Standards Australia (BSA).

Finally, before we get to the list, I have to recount the instance where using initials went horribly wrong.  It concerns a woman who thought the text message initials LOL meant “lots of love”.

Imagine her horror when, after she’d sent a message saying “Sorry to hear your father died. LOL”, a friend told her it means “laugh out loud”.

On with the list, with question marks where I’m not 100 per cent sure myself, and tjanks to Jean for bringing this up.

Strata Initials and Acronyms

AGM: Annual General Meeting – a compulsory meeting that must be held every year and to decide on budgets and by-laws and to which most owners don’t turn up.

BC: Body Corporate the old name for Owners Corporations in NSW and Victoria but still used in Queensland.

BCCM: Body Corporate and Community Management – strata law in Queensland.

CA: Community Association

CLMA: Community Land Management Act – this is the relatively newly revised law covering multiple buildings that share common property in NSW.  There’s a guide to it here from our sponsors Bannermans Lawyers

CP:  Common Property – the external walls, floors, ceilings, front doors, common areas, balconies, windows, roof and other bits of your apartment or block that you should not change without permission.

DCS: Department of Customer Service – this is the government ministry overseen by Victor Dominello (for the time being) and which incorporates Fair Trading.

DLI: Dicentennial Liability Insurance – This is the ten-year policy that Building Commissioner David Chandler hopes insurers will soon provide to cover blocks built by one of his four-star developers.

EGM: Extraordinary General Meeting – the general meeting where owners in a block get together to deal with something unexpected or which can’t wait for the next AGM.

EC: Executive Committee – now changed to Strata Committee because members were getting elevated ideas about their status.

NCAT: NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal – effectively the strata court which is supposed to be user-friendly and lawyer-free but isn’t.

OC: Owners Corporation – in NSW and Victoria, used to be the Body Corporate and if you’re an owner, you’re in it whether you want to be or not.

OC/BC: Not an ageing rock band, but alternatives when you are referring to both Queensland and NSW/Victorian strata bodies

OP:  Original poster – a more polite way of saying “the idiot who started this thread” in an online forum.

RAB: The RAB Act or Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 (NSW) grants new powers to New South Wales Fair Trading to regulate developers during the construction of residential apartment buildings to prevent building serious defects.

SC:  Strata committee – either the group of elected volunteer owners doing the heavy lifting to run the building as smoothly, efficiently and transparently as possible or, depending on your point of view, a self-serving cabal of owners who rig elections and wield too much power to their own benefit. You choose.

SCM: Strata Committee Meeting – It’s one vote per member and non-members can’t speak unless given permission by the committee (but how do you ask for permission?).

SM: Strata Manager – this is a manager of strata processes and finances who’s told what to do by the strata committee, or vice versa.  Can have all the powers of the strata committee delegated to them, but owners can take them back whenever they want.

SSMA: Strata Schemes Management Act – strata law in NSW. The equivalents are the Owners Corporation Act in Victoria and the Body Corporate and Community Management Act in Queensland.

UE: Unit entitlement – the figure on which your levies are calculated as well as your voting power in a poll vote at a general meeting.

VCAT: Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal – like NCAT but different.

If you have acronyms or initials that we have missed or others you’ve seen but don’t understand, please click on the link to this on the Forum or email mail@flatchat.com.au and let us know.