or the complete compressed file (overhead + payload). In contrast, a five-bit ASCII code for the same uncompressed datafile would represent only 170 bits, as can also be easily verified. The compressed file thus turns out to be 40% bigger than the uncompressed one! The conclusion is that 7 This consideration illustrates the interest of acronyms. Their primary use is to save text space, easing up reading and avoiding burdensome redundancies. This is particularly true with technical papers, where the publication space is usually limited. An equally important use of acronyms is to capture abstract concepts into small groups of characters, for instance ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) or HTML (hypertext markup language). The most popular acronyms are the ones that are easy to remember, such as FAQ (frequently asked questions), IMHO (in my humble opinion), WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), NIMBY (not in my backyard), and the champion VERONICA (very easy rodent-oriented netwide index to computerized archives), for instance. The repeated use of acronyms makes them progressively accepted as true English words or generic brand names, to the point that their original character-to-word correspondence is eventually forgotten by their users, for instance: PC for personal computer, GSM for global system for mobile [communications], LASER for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, NASDAQ for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, etc. Language may thus act a natural self- compression machine, which uses the human mind as a convenient dictionary. In practice, this dictionary is only rarely referred to, since the acronym gains its own meaning by repeated use. Optimal coding and compression compression can be efficient with a given datafile, but it is a worthless operation if the resulting overhead (needed to decompress the data) is significantly larger than the pay- load. But the "overhead tax" is substantially reduced when significantly longer datafiles are compressed. T