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Abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short") is strictly a shortening, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity. For example, the word 'abbreviation' can be abbreviated with 'abbr'.
Style conventions
In modern English there are several conventions for abbreviations and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to this end publishers express their preferences in a style guide.
Questions which arise include the following:
- Use of upper or lower case letters. If the original word was capitalised, then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When abbreviating words spelt with lower case letters, there is no consistent rule.
- Use of periods (American English for 'full stops') and spaces, for example when abbreviating United States, should one write "US", "U.S." or "U. S."? Spaces are generally not used between single letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S.". In American English, the period is usually added if the abbreviation may be interpreted as a word, though some American writers do not use a period here. There is no stop/period between letters of the same word, for example St. and not S.t. for Saint. In modern British English abbreviations are usually written without full stops.
- Acronyms that have entered the vocabulary as generic words are neither abbreviated with capital letters nor with any periods – sonar, for example.
- Whether to add an apostrophe for a plural where the plural is not formed by doubling up the last letter: should one write CDs or CD's? The apostrophe is not needed grammatically but sometimes is added to make it clear that the s is not part of the abbreviation.
Conventions followed by publications and newspapers:
- Publications based in the United States tend to follow the style guides of the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press. The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
- There is some inconsistency in abbreviation styles, however, as they are not rigorously defined by style guides. Some two-word abbreviations, like "United Nations", are abbreviated with uppercase letters and periods, and others, like "personal computer" (PC) and "compact disc" (CD), are not – they are typically abbreviated without periods and in lowercase letters. A third variation is to use lowercase letters without periods; this is used by Time Magazine in abbreviating "public relations" (p.r.). Moreover, even three-word abbreviations (most U.S. publications use uppercase abbreviations without periods) are sometimes not consistently abbreviated, even within the same article.
- The New York Times is unique in having a consistent style by always abbreviating with periods: P.C., I.B.M., P.R. This is in contrast with the trend of British publications to completely make do without periods for convenience.
- Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation:
- For the sake of convenience, many British publications, including the BBC and The Guardian, have completely done away with the use of full stops or periods in all abbreviations. These include:
- Social titles, like miss (Ms) or mister (Mr);
- Two word abbreviations for countries (US, not U.S.);
- Words are seldom abbreviated with lower case letters (PR, instead of p.r., or pr)
- Abbreviations beyond three words (full caps for all except initialisms);
- Names (ie, FW de Klerk, GB Whiteley, Park JS). A notable exception is the Economist (ie, Mr F. W. de Klerk)
- Scientific units.
- Acronyms are referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalised. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation can be abbreviated as Nato, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as Sars. Initialisms (which are similar to acronyms but which are not pronounced as words) are always written in capitals, for instance the British Broadcasting Corporation is abbreviated to BBC, never Bbc.
- When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (eg, 100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10ºC).
Miscellaneous and general rules
- Plurals are often formed by doubling up the last letter of the abbreviation. Most of these deal with writing and publishing: MS=manuscript, MSS=manuscripts; l=line, ll=lines; p=page, pp=pages; s=section, ss=sections). This form, derived from Latin is used in Europe in many places: dd=didots. "The following (lines or pages)" is denoted by ff. One example that does not concern printing is hh=hands.
- A doubled letter also appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as the Welsh consider a double l a separate sound: "Ll. George" for Lloyd George.
- Some titles, such as "Reverend" and "Honourable", are spelt out when preceded by "the". This is true for most British publications, and some in the United States.
- It is usually advised to spell out the abbreviation where it is new or unfamiliar to the reader (eg, UNESCO in a magazine about music).
History
After the Second World War, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuations after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept its use until more recently, and still maintain it more than Britons. The classic example, considered by their American counterparts quite curious, was the maintenance of the internal comma in a British organization of secret agents called 'Special Operations, Executive' - specifically, S.O.,E. - which you will not find in histories written after about 1960.
But before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: M. is the abbreviation for monsieur while Mme is that for Madame and Mademoiselle yields Mlle as its own abbreviation. Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a more simplistic rule and applied it rigorously.
Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. US media tends to abbreviate two word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but surprisingly, not personal computer (PC) or television (TV), which is a source of confusion. (See the Wikipedia article on television for an example of conflicting use in abbreviation styles.) Many British publications have gradually completely done away with the use of periods in abbreviations.
Examples
Abbreviation types
See also
External links
- AbbreviationZ acronyms, abbreviations & Initialisms directory.
- Acronyma]—large database of acronyms and abbreviations (over 450,000 entries)
- Acronym Finder—searchable acronyms and abbreviations site (over 400,000 entries)
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