Safire had been in the business long enough to know that the first thing you check for is the acronym — what will it spell?As Safire relates in Safire’s New Political Dictionary, he figured CRP was fine. Even if you threw in an extra “E” for ”re-elect” the worst it would spell is CREP. They announced the Committee to Re-Elect the President and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before it was dubbed CREEP.

The lesson? Watch out for those unintended acronyms, and don’t assume people will stick to the exact spelling. Take the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, created in the wake of Enron. It didn’t take long for a lot of lawyers and accountants to start calling it peek-a-boo, proving you don’t have to be able to spell to come up with a soundbite.

It’s even more embarrassing when you serve up a title that can be turned into a negative acronym without playing with the initials. A few years ago the federal government of Canada proposed a new tax that would blend together the federal and provincial sales taxes. Straightforwardly enough, they called it the Blended Sales Tax. Until opponents started calling it the BS Tax. Then the name was changed to the Harmonized Sales Tax.

So it pays to check out the acronym — and look for any possible way a critic can turn it against you.