Yeah I'm specifically responding to the question above.

Some things like REST/HTML/XML are familiar enough that the initialism is as good as a dictionary word.

SOAP, on the other hand, I forget what that was. Hopefully it's not important.

It’s not about being familiar. It’s that “Representational State Transfer” is as meaningless as REST to someone who doesn’t know what REST is. (And honestly, even to those who do know what it means)