Mastering English With Ease

NEFT, NIP, NIBSS, MICR and Other Banking Acronyms “When doing online banking transactions, I am often asked to use the option of NEFT or NIP.   I do not know the meaning of these two abbreviations, and would therefore, appreciate your explanation of them in your blog”.   This was an enquiry from one of the readers of our blog, recently.                   Ordinarily, the above enquiry ought to have been directed to bankers, but owing to the fact that this blog is a forum for interactive teaching, the required explanations on NEFT, NIP and other banking acronyms are provided hereunder: N E F T:      NEFT simply stands for National Electronic Funds Transfer.   It is a payment system usually used nation-wide, for facilitating one-to-one funds transfer.   With this system, one bank account holder can transfer funds electronically from one bank branch to another account holde...

Meaning of COVID-19 and Highlights of Associated Myth Busters           A reader of this blog recently asked to know the full meaning of COVID-19, saying he was confused that some persons called the current global pandemic ‘Coronavirus’ while others call it ‘COVID-19’.           Being an interactive blog, but without any claim of medical expertise, let it be amplified here that the acronym COVID-19 stands for Corona Virus Disease of 2019 .   The acronym was given by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in a press conference on February 11, 2020.    The disease started in Wuhan, China, in the late part of 2019, and has since spread globally.           Regarding the choice of the acronym COVID-19, the Director-General of WHO said that under agreed guidelines between WHO, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food and A...

ABBREVIATIONS & ACRONYMS RELATED TO GSM We now live in a computer age where communication is done easily and globally with the aid of the GSM cell phone.   This development has led to the coinage of some pertinent abbreviations and acronyms which we use daily without knowing or even giving thought to their meaning.   Let us now discuss such GSM-related abbreviations and acronyms in this article. GSM Meaning: GSM is derived from the words Group Special Mobile, but it is now given the universal meaning of Global System for Mobile Communication.   GSM was first developed and introduced by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute in 1991, but the technology is now being used in most parts of the world.       GSM uses cellular, a communication system that divides a geographic region into sections, called cells, and t he purpose of this division is to make the most use out of a limited number of transmission frequencies. Wi...

ABBREVIATIONS & ACRONYMS – KB, MB, GB & HD KB, MB, GB and HD are among abbreviations and acronyms we often these days in connection with computers and cell-phones.   Let us learn of their full meaning in this article. KB or Kb Meaning: The acronym KB or Kb in GSM and computer language stands for Kilobyte.   The size of a data file is often measured in kilobytes, and a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes.   A byte is a chunk of bits or a combination of bits used to represent information.   There are usually eight (8) bits in byte. To help us understand how many plain letters and words constitute a byte, and how many constitute a kilobyte, some computer experts like Erika Q. Stokes and others, have provided the following yardsticks: (1)     That if the letter ‘M’ is typed, followed by a space, and repeated across a whole page of A4-size paper (with provision for normal margins), we would have 3,129 bytes which is equal to 3.055 kilobytes;...

ABBREVIATIONS & ACRONYMS RELATED TO COMPUTER AND CELL-PHONES In this article, we will discuss abbreviations and acronyms related to computer and cell-phones, which we make use of everyday in our contemporary world. USB Meaning: USB stands for Universal Serial Bus.   It is a type of external peripheral interface or a type of computer port which can be used to connect external equipment to a computer with low-cost cable, using serial transmission.   USB could be used with keyboards, mice (plural of mouse), printers, scanners, some photocopiers, and removable hard drives like flash-drives and models.   Owing to its universal size, USB is now supported by all popular operating systems. Examples of Usage of the acronym USB: (i)                 Documents are usually sent from computers to printers with the use of USB cables. (ii)        ...