Allow me to waste just a tiny little bit of blog space today to help you answer a question that you were probably afraid to ask: How do you pronounce the terms DKIM and DMARC? Let me answer that, and I'll throw in some extra acronyms for free.
DKIM is pronounced "dee-kim" and DMARC is "dee-mark." BIMI is pronounced "bih-me," rhymes with "gimme." The US federal anti-spam law? CAN-SPAM, is just pronounced as two words: "can spam." VERP, the way of encoding return-path addresses for bounce tracking, is pronounced as if it were just a word: "verp." None of these terms are pronounced by spelling out the letters.
The same goes for "ARC"– I think. Authenticated Received Chain, the technology that embeds authentication results in a way meant to make mailing list message delivery easier, is pronounced as "ark," not by spelling out the letters.
DNS records? An "A" record is pretty obvious, but did you know that a PTR record is pronounced "pointer"? A TXT record is a "text" record, CNAME is pronounced "sea name" and most of the others, like MX and NS, you spell them out. Exception: An AAAA record, defined to give a name to an IPv6 address, is pronounced "quad A."
Two well known domain blocklists called SURBL and URIBL are pronounced as words, too, at least by me. I say the first one as "serble" and the second one as "yerble," though I found out recently that at least a few folks say the second one by spelling out the acronym ("U R I B L").
For these other internet, email and spam-related acronyms, though, people do indeed commonly just spell out the letters: CFBL, DNS, DNSBL, FBL, FQDN, GPT, MTA, MUA, RBL, SMTP, SNDS, SPF, SSL, and TLS. Thus, when talking about a DNS-based anti-spam blocklist like Spamhaus Zen, you are correct to spell out "D N S B L" in discussions. Talking about Transport Layer Security? Spell out "T L S." Etc.
Here's a special one: M3AAWG, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group, which is "where the industry comes together to work against bots, malware, spam, viruses, DoS attacks and other online exploitation." Protecting email is one of M3AAWG's goals, and many mailbox providers, email sending platforms, and email-focused cybersecurity or cybersecurity-adjacent firms are members. Folks tend to say M3AAWG out loud as "M3" or "mog" (rhymes with dog).
Huge disclaimer: I could be wrong about any of these. This one boils down to, "here's how I've pronounced these things on work calls over the past many years." Your mileage may vary, and I welcome your (gentle) feedback in comments or email.
For these other internet, email and spam-related acronyms, though, people do indeed commonly just spell out the letters: CFBL, DNS, DNSBL, FBL, FQDN, GPT, MTA, MUA, RBL, SMTP, SNDS, SPF, SSL, and TLS. Thus, when talking about a DNS-based anti-spam blocklist like Spamhaus Zen, you are correct to spell out "D N S B L" in discussions. Talking about Transport Layer Security? Spell out "T L S." Etc.
Here's a special one: M3AAWG, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group, which is "where the industry comes together to work against bots, malware, spam, viruses, DoS attacks and other online exploitation." Protecting email is one of M3AAWG's goals, and many mailbox providers, email sending platforms, and email-focused cybersecurity or cybersecurity-adjacent firms are members. Folks tend to say M3AAWG out loud as "M3" or "mog" (rhymes with dog).
Huge disclaimer: I could be wrong about any of these. This one boils down to, "here's how I've pronounced these things on work calls over the past many years." Your mileage may vary, and I welcome your (gentle) feedback in comments or email.