I tend to not use the word ‘the’ in front of acronyms, but I see this used in documents more and more.
REIP provides regional outreach services to Northeastern Ontario.
or
The REIP provides regional outreach services to Northeastern Ontario.
If the word ‘program’ is added after REIP, I would use ‘the.’
Which is correct?
Best Answer
In my experience, this comes down to the difference between acronyms and initialisms. Acronyms are pronounced as a words, while initialisms have each of their letters pronounced individually.
I would expect to hear the FBI, because FBI is an initialism (aloud: "eff-bee-eye"). Whenever its full form (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is normally preceded by "the," I would expect its initialized form to be as well. For organizations that do not normally have a leading "the," I probably would not expect one for its initialized form, either, but I cannot think of an example.
I would not expect to hear the NATO, even when I would expect to hear the full form as "the North Atlantic Treaty Organization", because NATO is an acronym (aloud: "nay-toh", not "enn-ay-tee-oh").
Of course, I would expect the NATO member when NATO is used an adjective to describe the member of NATO.
I have never heard a formal rule for this.