A short history of language

Thanks, through gritted teeth, to all of you who emailed us to refine, by which we mean to disagree with, our definition of abbreviations and acronyms.
To summarise your response: words such as CBT (compulsory basic training) are shortened phrases, so they are most certainly abbreviated and are abbreviations. An acronym is a word that is made out of the initial letters of a phrase, so CBT fails, but Nato is indeed an acronym.
Which leaves initialisms: some of you decide that it is a stricter form of the acronym, made from the first letters of all the words in the phrase – not missing out ‘the’ or ‘of’ if it spoils the word. Some of you say it is an bbreviation that is not an acronym – CBT again.
And some of you say it is both. Use this information wisely to upbraid your colleagues for their foolish lack of rigour, but please stop emailing us about it.