Uli wrote: What on earth is going on in the US? I try to follow the discussions (more or less) but reading the e-mails so full of abbreviations I do not know nor understand (what is a MOU for example)" Don't feel bad, Uli, this native speaker of English, who read this thread backwards (i.e. newest posts first then working backwards) was also confused. Because this forum is read by an international following, we need to be careful about using abbreviations which are not likely to be recognized outside of certain fields of endeavor. It is standard practice in using such abbreviations to introduce the abbreviation and define it before using it. For instance, one might write "If the memo of understanding (hereafter MOU) had been signed by all parties involved..." or "The Plant Inspection Station (hereafter PIS) is responsible..." One of us should have spoken up sooner. I'll bet those contributing to this rich vein of advice were so focused on the ideas they were trying to convey that it never occurred to them that it might be confusing to some readers. My mom tells the story of meeting one of her brothers in law shortly after she and my dad were married. This particular brother in law had spent his life in the military. My mom didn't understand a thing he said because everything he said was expressed in the sort of acronyms he was used to using in the military. He himself probably didn't know exactly what some of those acronyms stood for; in the world he lived in that was just the way everyone spoke. Jim McKenney