[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by lemiant

I have to be with you on this one, that bugged me when I read it too. It doesn't make sense if you consider acronyms as just a shorter way of writing the same thing. But IRI, while effectively the same thing as the Indiana Robotics Invitational, is a different kind of word/phrase (the acronym is a proper noun while the phrase is a bunch of adjectives describing a regular noun) and deserves to have sentences formed around it, not what it is replacing.

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Also, just in case some of you are English majors, I forgot and made some of the English terms up.

I really don't want this to turn into a grammar debate but I think you are wrong here.

If I were to tell you what country I lived in wouldn't it be incorrect to say " I live in USA"? by the same account it would be wrong to say "I competed at IRI", though that is the way I would say it. I think Libby is correct in saying The IRI.