Mispronounced or mistaken

We all mistake words sometimes. In college, two friends and I stared and stared at a box of grocery store brownies. Why? They were labelled "UNICED brownies" which we read as YOU-niss-ed. What the heck is YOU-niss-ed? Well, a fourth person in our group made us all feel like idiots when she deciphered it: "Un-iced, meaning no icing." un-iced. Oh!

Another example came from a professor I had for Calculus in college, who happened to be from China. He spent weeks talking in class about the "you-NIK-i-ness serum". Nobody had any clue what this meant. Finally one day in lecture a student said out loud "Uniqueness theorem" and the entire class went "Ohhh!"

Here are some things in my life that people I know mispronounce. Let me set the record straight!

Tophe (my email address) has only one syllable and rhymes with "loaf" (it's the first syllable of Topher, which is the last two syllables of Christopher)
Hoadley has two syllables: the first rhymes with "road" (not "how-add") and the second is "lee" (never "lay")
dolcelab is taken from the Italian word dolce, or sweet. It has two syllables, "DOLE-chay". So the lab is "DOLE-chay-lab"
CILT (the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies) is pronounced "silt", never "kilt"
CILTKN (the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies Knowledge Network) is pronounced "silt-kay-en", never "kilt-kun"
CSILE (Scardamalia and Bereiter's Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment) is pronounced "SEE-sill" (like see-saw)
CSCL (the field of computer supported collaborative learning, including the conferences on that topic) are NOT pronounced "SEE-sill", but instead are always spelled out: "see-ess-see-ell"
ICLS (the International Conference of the Learning Sciences) is always "eye-see-ell-ess"--it does not rhyme with "tickles". Likewise, ISLS (the International Society of the Learning Sciences) is "eye-ess-ell-ess" and not "ISS-liss"
My former employer, SRI International, is spelled out as "ess-are-eye". It used to be the Stanford Research Institute. Some mistakenly think it's a Hindi word, but actually it's just initials.
The KIE, or Knowledge Integration Environment, research project is pronounced like the English word "key" and doesn't rhyme with "pie".
MFK (the Multimedia Forum Kiosk) is always spelled out: "em-eff-kay". You will only sound like you are swearing if you try to pronounce it.

And while we're at it, some understandable confusions:

My institution is the Pennsylvania State University, or Penn State, but never "Penn"--that's our rival the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the Ivy League college with the Wharton Business School. I am located in the town (okay, borough) of State College, PA (not College Station, or College Park), although the campus itself is referred to as the University Park campus (just to make things difficult). How my mom remembers it: It's Penn STATE in STATE College. Penn State UNIVERSITY at UNIVERSITY Park. Capiche? (and that's "ka-PEESH" to you, buddy!)
One of my two appointments is in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, called IST ("eye-ess-tee") around here. Unfortunately, the group on campus that does tech support, formerly known as the center for academic computing or CAC (pronounce like you are retching) for short, has renamed themselves to be Information Technology Services, so they are now ITS ("eye-tee-ess"). Lots of people get confused. Information sciences and technology is sometimes called "informatics" in other universities. Similar colleges or schools in other universities are also nicknamed "i-schools" (akin to business schools being called "b-schools").
To make matters worse, at some universities the program analogous to my other appointment in Instructional Systems is called IST (for Instructional Systems and Technologies) or ISD (Instructional Systems Design). Here at Penn State though we call it InSys ("IN-sis").
And just so's you know, the computer made by Apple is the Mac. MAC (all caps) as in "MAC address" stands for Media-specific Access Control address or Media Access Controller address. It's a unique hardware address (like a serial number) for an ethernet card or a wireless card. Macs have one or more MAC addresses, but so do Windows machines! You will almost always see this incorrectly capitalized on some website that says "we do not support MACs with our product" which would be funny if true because it would mean they don't connect their computers to the Internet!

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