After "that," "the" ...

[Powderhorn]

AP copy today made frequent reference to "FAA" -- and not just in adjectival use. FAA did this, FAA suggested that.

I've run into this on a more local level, with city councils and such, but when serving as a noun, "FAA" seems naked without its "the." I've never heard casual conversation along the lines of, "Did you hear what FAA did today?" Any ideas on why/if this usage passes muster?

[fev]

I don't think it does pass muster. Sounds like an error on the A&P's part.

An article in one of the linguistics journals a few years back (going from memory here, sorry, but I think it was by Heidi Harley) found that acronyms -- "NASA," for example -- usually don't get the article, but initialisms (CIA, FBI) do.

I wouldn't do "City Council voted ..." for "the City Council voted..." either, but evidently lots of people think it's mandatory to lose the article there. Maybe that's an overgeneralization from "Congress voted."

[Gerri Berendzen]

Way back in the late-80s, I had a reporter just out of school tell me that the article "the" wasn't necessary with "city council." "That's what my professors told me," she said. I replied that her professors weren't paying her check and it was required at in her work now.

I'm not sure where the no-article-with-city-council thing started, but, to me, it's like nails on the chalkboard. Sure, dropping the article isn't going to cause the downfall of democracy or anything, but we all have a little pet peeves. And it takes me no time to add it in when I don't see it.

As to the FAA references, I just pulled up an AP story with five references to the agency using initials — two have a "the" in front of them, three don't. (All the reference have a similar structure; not like "three FAA agents," where it wouldn't be necessary.)

I see less and less consistency in AP copy these days — perhaps for the same reasons I see less and less of it everywhere.