What is the abbreviation of the word abbreviation

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning short^[1]) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev.; NPO, for nil (or nothing) per (by) os (mouth) is an abbreviated medical instruction. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language (for example, e.g., i.e. or RSVP). Some types of abbreviations are acronyms (some pronounceable, some initialisms) or grammatical contractions or crasis.

An abbreviation is a shortening by any of these or other methods.

Types[edit]

Acronyms, initialisms, contractions and crasis share some semantic and phonetic functions, and all four are connected by the term «abbreviation» in loose parlance.^[2]: p167

An initialism is an abbreviation pronounced by spelling out each letter, i.e. FBI (/ˌɛf.biːˈaɪ/), USA (/ˌjuː.ɛsˈeɪ/), IBM (/ˌaɪ.biːˈɛm/), BBC (/ˌbiː.biːˈsiː/)

A contraction is a reduction in the length of a word or phrase made by omitting certain of its letters or syllables. Consequently, contractions are a subset of abbreviations. Often, but not always, the contraction includes the first and last letters or elements. Examples of contractions are «li’l» (for «little»), «I’m» (for «I am»), and «he’d’ve» (for «he would have»).

History[edit]

Abbreviations have a long history. They were created to avoid spelling out whole words. This might be done to save time and space (given that many inscriptions were carved in stone) and also to provide secrecy. In both Greece and Rome the reduction of words to single letters was common.^[3] In Roman inscriptions, «Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation». However, «some could have more than one meaning, depending on their context. (For example, ⟨A⟩ can be an abbreviation for many words, such as ager, amicus, annus, as, Aulus, Aurelius, aurum and avus.)»^[4] Many frequent abbreviations consisted of more than one letter: for example COS for consul and COSS for its nominative etc. plural consules.

Abbreviations were frequently used in English from its earliest days. Manuscripts of copies of the Old English poem Beowulf used many abbreviations, for example the Tironian et (⁊) or & for and, and y for since, so that «not much space is wasted».^[5] The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included a growth in the use of such abbreviations.^[6] At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time.

Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ.

In the Early Modern English period, between the 15th and 17th centuries, the thorn Þ was used for th, as in Þ^e (‘the’). In modern times, ⟨Þ⟩ was often used (in the form ⟨y⟩) for promotional reasons, as in Y^e Olde Tea Shoppe.^[7]

During the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.^[8][9]

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. This question is considered below.

Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s led to a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant and text messaging. The original SMS supported message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set), for instance.^[a] This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated.^[10] More recently Twitter, a popular social networking service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits.

In HTML, abbreviations can be annotated using <abbr title="Meaning of the abbreviation.">abbreviation</abbr> to reveal its meaning by hovering the cursor.

Style conventions in English[edit]

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 make this easier, publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Some questions which arise are shown below.

Lowercase letters[edit]

If the original word was capitalized then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When a word is abbreviated to more than a single letter and was originally spelled with lower case letters then there is no need for capitalization. However, when abbreviating a phrase where only the first letter of each word is taken, then all letters should be capitalized, as in YTD for year-to-date, PCB for printed circuit board and FYI for for your information. However, see the following section regarding abbreviations that have become common vocabulary: these are no longer written with capital letters.

Periods (full stops) and spaces[edit]

A period (full stop) is often used to signify an abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this should happen.

According to Hart’s Rules, the traditional rule is that abbreviations (in the narrow sense that includes only words with the ending, and not the middle, dropped) terminate with a full stop, whereas contractions (in the sense of words missing a middle part) do not, but there are exceptions.^{[2]: p167–170} Fowler’s Modern English Usage says full stops are used to mark both abbreviations and contractions, but recommends against this practice: advising them only for abbreviations and lower-case initialisms and not for upper-case initialisms and contractions.^[11]

Example	Category	Short form	Source
Doctor	Contraction	Dr	D——r
Professor	Abbreviation	Prof.	Prof…
The Reverend	Abbreviation	Rev.	Rev…
The Reverend	Contraction	Revd	Rev——d
The Right Honourable	Contraction and Abbreviation	Rt Hon.	R——t Hon…

In American English, the period is usually included regardless of whether or not it is a contraction, e.g. Dr. or Mrs.. In some cases, periods are optional, as in either US or U.S. for United States, EU or E.U. for European Union, and UN or U.N. for United Nations. There are some house styles, however—American ones included—that remove the periods from almost all abbreviations. For example:

• The U.S. Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices advises that periods should not be used with abbreviations on road signs, except for cardinal directions as part of a destination name. (For example, «Northwest Blvd», «W. Jefferson», and «PED XING» all follow this recommendation.)
• AMA style, used in many medical journals, uses no periods in abbreviations or acronyms, with almost no exceptions. Thus eg, ie, vs, et al, Dr, Mr, MRI, ICU, and hundreds of others contain no periods. The only exceptions are No. (an abbreviation of Numero, Number), to avoid confusion with the word «No»; initials within persons’ names (such as «George R. Smith»); and «St.» within persons’ names when the person prefers it (such as «Emily R. St. Clair») (but not in city names such as St Louis or St Paul).

Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic words are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba.

Today, spaces are generally not used between single-letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters «U. S.»

When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, only one period is used: The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C.

Plural forms[edit]

There is a question about how to pluralize abbreviations, particularly acronyms. Some writers tend to pluralize abbreviations by adding ‘s (apostrophe s), as in «two PC’s have broken screens», although this notation typically indicates possessive case. However, this style is not preferred by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian, writing about style in academic writings,^[12] allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms «only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters». Turabian would therefore prefer «DVDs» and «URLs» and «Ph.D.’s», while the Modern Language Association^[13] explicitly says, «do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation». Also, the American Psychological Association specifically says,^[14][15] «without an apostrophe».

However, the 1999 style guide for The New York Times states that the addition of an apostrophe is necessary when pluralizing all abbreviations, preferring «PC’s, TV’s and VCR’s».^[16]

Following those who would generally omit the apostrophe, to form the plural of run batted in, simply add an s to the end of RBI.^[17]

• RBIs

For all other rules, see below:

To form the plural of an abbreviation, a number, or a capital letter used as a noun, simply add a lowercase s to the end. Apostrophes following decades and single letters are also common.

• A group of MPs
• The roaring 20s
• Mind your Ps and Qs

To indicate the plural of the abbreviation or symbol of a unit of measure, the same form is used as in the singular.

• 1 lb or 20 lb
• 1 ft or 16 ft
• 1 min or 45 min

When an abbreviation contains more than one full point, Hart’s Rules recommends putting the s after the final one.

• Ph.D.s
• M.Phil.s
• the d.t.s

However, subject to any house style or consistency requirement, the same plurals may be rendered less formally as:

• PhDs
• MPhils
• the DTs. (This is the recommended form in the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.)

According to Hart’s Rules, an apostrophe may be used in rare cases where clarity calls for it, for example when letters or symbols are referred to as objects.

• The x’s of the equation
• Dot the i’s and cross the t’s

However, the apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes:

• The xs of the equation
• Dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s

In Latin, and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English, single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter for note-taking. Most of these deal with writing and publishing. A few longer abbreviations use this as well.

Singular abbreviation	Word/phrase	Plural abbreviation	Discipline
d.	didot	dd.	typography
f.	following line or page	ff.	notes
F.	folio	Ff.	literature
h.	hand	hh.	horse height
J.	Justice	JJ.	law (job title)
l.	line	ll.	notes
MS	manuscript	MSS	notes
op.	opus (plural: opera)	opp.	notes
p.	page	pp.	notes
Q.	quarto	Qq.	literature
s. (or §)	section	ss. (or §§)	notes
v.	volume	vv.	notes

Conventions followed by publications and newspapers[edit]

United States[edit]

Publications based in the U.S. tend to follow the style guides of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press.^{[citation needed]} The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The National Institute of Standards and Technology sets the style for abbreviations of units.

United Kingdom[edit]

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, e.g. Ms or Mr (though these would usually have not had full stops—see above) Capt, Prof, etc.;
  • Two-letter abbreviations for countries («US», not «U.S.»);
  • Abbreviations beyond three letters (full caps for all except initialisms^{[clarification needed]});
  • Words seldom abbreviated with lower case letters («PR», instead of «p.r.», or «pr»)
  • Names («FW de Klerk», «GB Whiteley», «Park JS»). A notable exception is The Economist which writes «Mr F. W. de Klerk».
  • Scientific units (see Measurement below).
• Acronyms are often referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalized. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can be abbreviated as «Nato» or «NATO», and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as «Sars» or «SARS» (compare with «laser» which has made the full transition to an English word and is rarely capitalised at all).
• Initialisms are always written in capitals; for example the «British Broadcasting Corporation» is abbreviated to «BBC», never «Bbc». An initialism is also an acronym but is not pronounced as a word.
• When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10°C). (This is contrary to the SI standard; see below.)

Miscellaneous and general rules[edit]

• A doubled letter appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as in Welsh the double «l» is a separate sound: «Ll. George» for (British prime minister) David Lloyd George.
• Some titles, such as «Reverend» and «Honourable», are spelt out when preceded by «the», rather than as «Rev.» or «Hon.» respectively. This is true for most British publications, and some in the United States.
• A repeatedly used abbreviation should be spelt out for identification on its first occurrence in a written or spoken passage.^[18] Abbreviations likely to be unfamiliar to many readers should be avoided.

Measurements: abbreviations or symbols[edit]

Writers often use shorthand to denote units of measure. Such shorthand can be an abbreviation, such as «in» for «inch» or can be a symbol such as «km» for «kilometre» (or kilometer).

In the International System of Units (SI) manual^[19] the word «symbol» is used consistently to define the shorthand used to represent the various SI units of measure. The manual also defines the way in which units should be written, the principal rules being:

• The conventions for upper and lower case letters must be observed—for example 1 MW (megawatts) is equal to 1,000,000 watts and 1,000,000,000 mW (milliwatts).
• No periods should be inserted between letters—for example «m.s» (which is an approximation of «m·s», which correctly uses middle dot) is the symbol for «metres multiplied by seconds», but «ms» is the symbol for milliseconds.
• No periods should follow the symbol unless the syntax of the sentence demands otherwise (for example a full stop at the end of a sentence).
• The singular and plural versions of the symbol are identical—not all languages use the letter «s» to denote a plural.

Syllabic abbreviation[edit]

A syllabic abbreviation is usually formed from the initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police. It is a variant of the acronym. Syllabic abbreviations are usually written using lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter. Syllabic abbreviations should be distinguished from portmanteaus, which combine two words without necessarily taking whole syllables from each.

By language[edit]

Albanian[edit]

In Albanian, syllabic acronyms are sometimes used for composing a person’s name, such as Migjeni – an abbreviation from his original name (Millosh Gjergj Nikolla) a famous Albanian poet and writer – or ASDRENI (Aleksander Stavre Drenova), another famous Albanian poet.

Other such names which are used commonly in recent decades are GETOAR, composed from Gegeria + Tosks (representing the two main dialects of the Albanian language, Gegë and Toskë, based on the country’s two main regions Gegëria and Toskëria, and Arbanon — which is an alternative way used to describe all Albanian lands.

English[edit]

Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English. Some UK government agencies such as Ofcom (Office of Communications) and the former Oftel (Office of Telecommunications) use this style.

New York City has various neighborhoods named by syllabic abbreviation, such as Tribeca (Triangle below Canal Street) and SoHo (South of Houston Street). This usage has spread into other American cities, giving SoMa, San Francisco (South of Market) and LoDo, Denver (Lower Downtown), amongst others.

Chicago-based electric service provider ComEd is a syllabic abbreviation of (Commonwealth) and (Thomas) Edison.

Sections of California are also often colloquially syllabically abbreviated, as in NorCal (Northern California), CenCal (Central California), and SoCal (Southern California). Additionally, in the context of Los Angeles, California, the Syllabic abbreviation SoHo (Southern Hollywood) refers to the southern portion of the Hollywood neighborhood.

Partially syllabic abbreviations are preferred by the US Navy, as they increase readability amidst the large number of initialisms that would otherwise have to fit into the same acronyms. Hence DESRON 6 is used (in the full capital form) to mean «Destroyer Squadron 6», while COMNAVAIRLANT would be «Commander, Naval Air Force (in the) Atlantic.»

Syllabic abbreviations are a prominent feature of Newspeak, the fictional language of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The political contractions of Newspeak—Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty)—are described by Orwell as similar to real examples of German (q.v.) and Russian contractions (q.v.) in the 20th century. Like Nazi (Nationalsozialismus) and Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (Young Communists’ League), the contractions in Newspeak are supposed to have a political function by virtue of their abbreviated structure itself: nice sounding and easily pronounceable, their purpose is to mask all ideological content from the speaker.^{[20]: 310–8}

A more recent syllabic abbreviation has emerged with the disease COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease 2019) caused by the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus (itself frequently abbreviated to SARS-CoV-2, partly an initialism).

German[edit]

Syllabic abbreviations were and are common in German; much like acronyms in English, they have a distinctly modern connotation, although contrary to popular belief, many date back to before 1933, if not the end of the Great War. Kriminalpolizei, literally criminal police but idiomatically the Criminal Investigation Department of any German police force, begat KriPo (variously capitalised), and likewise Schutzpolizei, the protection police or uniform department, begat SchuPo. Along the same lines, the Swiss Federal Railways’ Transit Police—the Transportpolizei—are abbreviated as the TraPo.

With the National Socialist German Workers’ Party gaining power came a frenzy of government reorganisation, and with it a series of entirely new syllabic abbreviations. The single national police force amalgamated from the Schutzpolizeien of the various states became the Ordnungspolizei or «order police»; the state KriPos together formed the Sicherheitspolizei or «security police»; and there was also the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) or «secret state police». The new order of the German Democratic Republic in the east brought about a conscious denazification, but also a repudiation of earlier turns of phrase in favour of neologisms such as Stasi for Staatssicherheit («state security», the secret police) and VoPo for Volkspolizei. The phrase politisches Büro, which may be rendered literally as office of politics or idiomatically as political party steering committee, became Politbüro.

Syllabic abbreviations are not only used in politics, however. Many business names, trademarks, and service marks from across Germany are created on the same pattern: for a few examples, there is Aldi, from Theo Albrecht, the name of its founder, followed by discount; Haribo, from Hans Riegel, the name of its founder, followed by Bonn, the town of its head office; and Adidas, from Adolf «Adi» Dassler, the nickname of its founder followed by his surname.

Russian[edit]

Syllabic abbreviations are very common in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. They are often used as names of organizations. Historically, popularization of abbreviations was a way to simplify mass-education in 1920s (see Likbez).

Leninist organisations such as the Comintern (Communist International) and Komsomol (Kommunisticheskii Soyuz Molodyozhi, or «Communist youth union») used Russian language syllabic abbreviations. In the modern Russian language, words like Rosselkhozbank (from Rossiysky selskokhozyaystvenny bank — Russian Agricultural Bank, RusAg) and Minobrnauki (from Ministerstvo obrazovaniya i nauki — Ministry of Education and Science) are still commonly used. In nearby Belarus, there are Beltelecom (Belarus Telecommunication) and Belsat (Belarus Satellite).

Spanish[edit]

Syllabic abbreviations are common in Spanish; examples abound in organization names such as Pemex for Petróleos Mexicanos («Mexican Petroleums») or Fonafifo for Fondo Nacional de Financimiento Forestal (National Forestry Financing Fund).

Malay and Indonesian[edit]

In Southeast Asian languages, especially in Malay languages, syllabic abbreviations are also common; examples include Petronas (for Petroliam Nasional, «National Petroleum»), its Indonesian equivalent Pertamina (from its original name Perusahaan Pertambangan Minyak dan Gas Bumi Negara, «State Oil and Natural Gas Mining Company»), and Kemenhub (from Kementerian Perhubungan, «Ministry of Transportation»)

Chinese and Japanese kanji[edit]

East Asian languages whose writing systems use Chinese characters form abbreviations similarly by using key Chinese characters from a term or phrase. For example, in Japanese the term for the United Nations, kokusai rengō (国際連合) is often abbreviated to kokuren (国連). (Such abbreviations are called ryakugo (略語) in Japanese; see also Japanese abbreviated and contracted words). The syllabic abbreviation of kanji words is frequently used for universities: for instance, Tōdai (東大) for Tōkyō daigaku (東京大学, University of Tokyo) and is used similarly in Chinese: Běidà (北大) for Běijīng Dàxué (北京大学, Peking University). The English phrase «Gung ho» originated as a Chinese abbreviation.

See also[edit]

• Abbreviation (music) – abbreviation in musical notation
• Clipping (morphology) – Reduction of a word to one of its parts
• Gramogram – Group of letters pronounced as if a word
• List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions
• List of abbreviations in photography
• Acronym – Word or name made from the initial components of the words of a sequence
  • List of acronyms
• List of business and finance abbreviations
• List of classical abbreviations
• List of medieval abbreviations
• Portmanteau – Word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others
  • List of portmanteaus
• Neologism – Newly coined term not accepted into mainstream language
• Numeronym – Number-based word
• RAS syndrome – Acronym redundantly coupled with its word(s)
• SMS language – Abbreviated slang used in text messaging
• Three-letter acronym – Abbreviation consisting of three letters
• The abbreviations used in the 1913 edition of Webster’s dictionary
• Unicode alias names and abbreviations – Names and aliases of Unicode characters

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Media related to Abbreviation at Wikimedia Commons
• Acronyms at Curlie

Last Updated:
12 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, such as «Jan.» for «January.» The abbreviated form of the word «abbreviation» is «abbr.»—or, less commonly, «abbrv.» or «abbrev.» Abbreviation comes from the Latin word brevis meaning «short.»

In American English, many abbreviations are followed by a period (such as «Dr.» or «Ms.»). In contrast, British usage generally omits the period (or full stop) in abbreviations that include the first and last letters of a single word (such as «Dr» or «Ms»). When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, a single period serves both to mark the abbreviation and close the sentence.

Linguist David Crystal notes that abbreviations are «a major component of the English writing system, not a marginal feature. The largest dictionaries of abbreviations contain well over half a million entries, and their number is increasing all the time»

Common Abbreviations

These resources explain more about the various types of abbreviations:

• Acronym
• Backronym
• Commonly confused Latin abbreviations in English
• Common revision symbols and abbreviations
• Common scholarly abbreviations
• E.g. and i.e.
• Etc. and et al.
• Initialese
• Initialism
• Logograph

Examples and Observations

«In general, spell out the names of government bureaus and agencies, well-known organizations, companies, etc., on first reference. In later references, use short forms like the agency or the company when possible because handfuls of initials make for mottled typography and choppy prose.»

– Siegal, Allan M. and William G. Connolly. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: the Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the Worlds Most Authoritative Newspaper. Three Rivers Press, 1999

«Abbreviations may be ironic, humorous, or whimsical: for example, the rail link between the town of Bedford and the London station of St. Pancras is locally known as the Bedpan Line; a comparable link for Boston, New York, and Washington is the Bosnywash circuit. Comments on life may be telescoped into such sardonic packages as: BOGSAT a Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around a Table (making decisions about other people); GOMER Get Out of My Emergency Room (said by physicians to hypochondriacs); MMMBA Miles and Miles of Bloody Africa (an in-group term among people who have to travel those miles); TGIF Thank God It’s Friday (after a particularly hard working week).»

– McArthur, Tom.The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press, 1992

Abbreves

«Today, the fave (for ‘favorite’) abbreves are obvi (a shortening of ‘Thank you, Captain Obvious’) and belig (a clipping of ‘belligerent,’ retaining the soft g). Nobody in the young-barflies crowd orders ‘the usual’; it’s the yoozh. My grandnephew Jesse concludes sentences with whatev, which is probs (for ‘probably’) ‘whatever.’ In this cacophony of abbreves, word endings are scattered all over the floor. Go fig.»

– Safire, William. “Abbreve That Template.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 May 2009

Tote-Speak

«You see it on Twitter a lot, people exclaiming about their totes delish spags or their totes redicboyfs. Linguists Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones call this practice ‘totesing’—the systematic abbreviation (‘abbreviash’) of words to effect a certain tone. The fad might have started with ‘totally’ becoming totes, but at this point, no entry in the English lexicon is safe.»

– Guo, Jeff. “The Totes Amazesh Way Millennials Are Changing the English Language.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 13 Jan. 2016

Twitter Speak

The following are some real words produced by real human beings on Twitter:

• «Totes tradge (tragic): David Bowie dying is totes tradge.«
• «Bluebs (blueberries): Bluebs in yog are my favorite snack.«
• «Totes emosh (emotional): When Cookie hugged Jamal it made me totes emosh.«
• «iPh (iPhone): OMG I dropped my iPh!«
• «If you’re not a millennial—and even if you are—you might think totesing is atrosh and unprofesh. But get used to it. Though no one is quite sure where it came from, this way of speaking has been around for well over a decade.»

Logograms

«‘Logograms’…play a part in the English writing system: these are cases where a word is not just shortened, but entirely replaced with a symbol. Examples include @ for ‘at,’ £ for ‘pound,’ % for ‘per cent,’ and + for ‘plus.’ The ampersand, &, is one of the oldest. It is a collapsed version of the Latin word et, ‘and’: the bottom circle is what’s left of the e, and the rising tail on the right is what’s left of the t. Numerals are another kind that we read as 1, 2, 3, etc. as ‘one, two, three…’ And it is part of the business of learning to read and write to know when we should write words in their logographic form and when to spell them out.»

– Crystal, David. Spell It Out. Picador, 2014

The term abbreviation originates in the Latin language, and is a spelling procedure that involves the reduction of a word through the deletion of final or central letters and usually ends with a period. Examples include: ATT. (for “attention”), Mr. (by “sir”), Dr. (by “doctor”).

Abbreviation	Meaning
PNAD	Protein Name Abbreviation Dictionary
FLAH	Four-Letter Abbreviation Hunt
AJAR	Acronyms, Jargon, Abbreviations, and Rubbish
A	Abbreviation
STASA	Scientific and Technical Acronyms, Symbols, and Abbreviations
CCNA	Customer Carrier Name Abbreviation
AIAD	Acronyms, Initialisms, and Abbreviations Dictionary
ABBRS	Abbreviations
LFLA	Longer Four Letter Abbreviation
AAAAAAA	American Association Against Acronym and Abbreviation Abuse
AAAH	Airbus Approved Abbreviation Handbook
AAAAAA	Association for the Abolition of Abused Abbreviations and Asinine Acronyms
SEAL	Standard Emitter Abbreviation Listing
UNA	Use No Abbreviations
ACNA	Access Customer Name Abbreviation
ACNA	Access Carrier Name Abbreviation
TLA	Three Letter Abbreviation
ABCA	Abbreviations, Brevity Codes, and Acronyms
ADAM	another database of abbreviations in MEDLINE
EPA	Error-Prone Abbreviation
SA	Syllabic Abbreviation
LOA	List of Abbreviations
JAS	Journal Abbreviation Sources
GRY	[not an acronym or abbreviation] Please see this link
FLA	Four Letter Abbreviation
FLA	Five Letter Abbreviation
AAI	Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms
AAD	Acronym/Abbreviation Definition

Although these abbreviations (and many others) are massively used and have taken on a conventional form, anyone who knows how to write can create an abbreviation for their personal use. When a writer does this, he usually includes a glossary at the beginning or end of his work where he explains the particular abbreviations he has used.

There are two ways to abbreviate a term: by truncation or by shrinkage. The abbreviation for truncation is to remove the final part of the word, as can be seen by looking at Av. (by “avenue”), or etc. (by “etcetera”). In the Spanish language, such abbreviations never end in vowels, unlike other languages, such as English (see Ave., which corresponds to the term “avenue”, which means avenue).

This leads us to deal with a very common mistake made by students of foreign languages, or those who consider that they can speak a language simply because it has certain superficial similarities with theirs: to transfer the spelling rules from their native to foreign language. Both punctuation and division of words, accentuation, grammar and of course abbreviations can vary substantially from language to language, and it is essential to keep this in mind to learn correctly.

The most common thing, regardless of the construction of the abbreviation itself, is that it is assumed that they all lead to an end point. If we take as an example “doctor”, one of the terms that are most commonly written abbreviated in several languages, it is very likely that many people create correct the abbreviation Dr. in any Romance language, among which are Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French, among many others. Similarly, since the Anglo-Saxon term “doctor” is widely known and has the same spelling as its corresponding Spanish, it is surely also considered natural that it is abbreviated as in Spanish.

Using the latter particular case, if we refer to the English rules to construct the abbreviations, we will notice that if its last letter corresponds to the last of the original term, then it should not end with a period. This makes it clear that there is a difference between the Castilian “Dr.” and the English “Dr” however small it may seem and should not be used interchangeably.

The abbreviation by contraction,on the other hand, implies the removal of the central letters of the word, leaving only the most representative; some of the most commonly used are Avenue (for “avenue”)and no. (by “number”).

There are abbreviations that can end in flying letters, such as being no (by “number”). On the other hand, there are abbreviations in which the end point of a word is replaced by a forward slash: c/c (by “current account”)or c/u (by “each”). There are even abbreviations that can be written in parentheses: (a) (by “alias”).

It should be noted that, according to the spelling rule, abbreviations should maintain the tilde of the word of origin, as is the case with page (by “page”).

The acronym and acronym are other types of abbreviations and are often confused with each other and with abbreviations, although in essence they are clearly different: the acronym is to take the initial letter of each word that makes up a complex type expression, such as IGP (Internal Gross Product); the acronym, on the other hand, uses more letters of the terms it puts together, so that its sound is equivalent to that of a word, as is the case with SCM (Southern Common Market).

Filter by:

Sort by:PopularityAlphabeticallyCategory

For guidelines on making and editing abbreviation articles on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations.

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning short) is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv. or abbrev.

In strict analysis, abbreviations should not be confused with contractions or acronyms (including initialisms), with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term «abbreviation» in loose parlance.^[1]:p167An abbreviation is a shortening by any method; a contraction is a reduction of size by the drawing together of the parts. A contraction of a word is made by omitting certain letters or syllables and bringing together the first and last letters or elements; an abbreviation may be made either by omitting certain portions from the interior or by cutting off a part. A contraction is an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily a contraction. However, normally acronyms are regarded as a subgroup of abbreviations (e.g. by the Council of Science Editors).

Abbreviations can also be used to give a different context to the word itself, such as «PIN Number» (wherein if the abbreviation were removed the context would be invalid).

History

Abbreviation has been used as long as phonetic script has existed, in some senses actually being more common in early literacy, where spelling out a whole word was often avoided, initial letters commonly being used to represent words in specific application. By classical Greece and Rome, the reduction of words to single letters was still normal, but can default.^{[clarification needed]}

An increase in literacy has, historically, sometimes spawned a trend toward abbreviation. The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviation.^[2] At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time. An example from the Oxford University Register, 1503:

Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ.

During the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. The use of abbreviation for the names of «Father of modern etymology»^{[citation needed]} J. R. R. Tolkien and his friend C. S. Lewis, and other members of the Oxford literary group known as the Inklings, are sometimes cited as symptomatic of this.^{[citation needed]} Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.^[3][4]

After World War II, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuation points after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept such 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 organisation of secret agents called the «Special Operations, Executive» — «S.O.,E» — which is not found 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». Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously.^{[citation needed]}

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. The U.S. media tend to use periods in two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but not personal computer (PC) or television (TV). Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations.

Minimization of punctuation in typewritten material became economically desirable in the 1960s and 1970s for the many users of carbon-film ribbons, since a period or comma consumed the same length of non-reusable expensive ribbon as did a capital letter.

Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s allowed for a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant- and text messaging. SMS, for instance, supports message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set). This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated.^[5] More recently Twitter, a popular social network service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits.

Style conventions in English

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 make this easier, publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include those in the following subsections.

Lowercase 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 that are originally spelled with lower case letters, there is no need for capitalisation.

Periods (full stops) and spaces

A period (full stop) is sometimes written after an abbreviated word, but there are exceptions and a general lack of consensus about when this should happen.

In British English, according to Hart’s Rules, the general rule is that abbreviations (in the narrow sense that includes only words with the ending, and not the middle, dropped) terminate with a full stop (period), whereas contractions (in the sense of words missing a middle part) do not.^[1]:p167

Example	Category	Short form	Source
Doctor	Contraction	Dr	D–r
Professor	Abbreviation	Prof.	Prof…
The Reverend	Contraction (or Abbreviation)	Revd (or Rev.)	Rev–d
The Right Honourable	Contraction and Abbreviation	Rt Hon.	R–t Hon…

In American English, the period is usually included. In some cases periods are optional, as in either US or U.S. for United States, EU or E.U. for European Union, and UN or U.N. for United Nations.

A third standard removes the full stops from all abbreviations. The U.S. Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices advises that periods should not be used with abbreviations on road signs, except for cardinal directions as part of a destination name. (For example, «Northwest Blvd», «W. Jefferson», and «PED XING» all follow this recommendation.)

Acronyms that were originally capitalised (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic words are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba.

Spaces are generally not used between single letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters «U. S.».

When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, only one period is used: The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C.

Plural forms

To form the plural of an abbreviation, a number, or a capital letter used as a noun, simply add a lowercase s to the end.

• A group of MPs
• The roaring 20s
• Mind your Ps and Qs

To indicate the plural of the abbreviation of a unit of measure, the same form is used as in the singular.

• 1 lb or 20 lb.
• 1 ft or 16 ft.
• 1 min or 45 min.

When an abbreviation contains more than one full point, Hart’s Rules recommends to put the s after the final one.

• Ph.D.s
• M.Phil.s
• the d.t.s

However, subject to any house style or consistency requirement, the same plurals may be rendered less formally as:

• PhDs
• MPhils
• the DTs. (This is the recommended form in the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.)

According to Hart’s Rules, an apostrophe may be used in rare cases where clarity calls for it, for example when letters or symbols are referred to as objects.

• The x’s of the equation
• Dot the i’s and cross the t’s

However, the apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes:

• The xs of the equation
• Dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s

In Latin, and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English, single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter for note-taking. Most of these deal with writing and publishing. A few longer abbreviations use this as well.

Singular abbreviation	Singular Word	Plural abbreviation	Plural Word	Discipline
d.	didot	dd.	didots	typography
f.	following line or page	ff.	following lines or pages	notes
F.	folio	Ff.	folios	literature
h.	hand	hh.	hands	horse height
l.	line	ll.	lines	notes
MS	manuscript	MSS	manuscripts	notes
op.	opus	opp.	opera	notes
p.	page	pp.	pages	notes
P.	pope	PP.	popes
Q.	quarto	Qq.	quartos	literature
s. (or §)	section	ss. (or §§)	sections	notes
v.	volume	vv.	volumes	notes

Conventions followed by publications and newspapers

United States

Publications based in the U.S. tend to follow the style guides of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press.^{[verification needed]} The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The National Institute of Standards and Technology sets the style for abbreviations of units.

United Kingdom

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 Ms or Mr (though these would usually not have had full stops — see above) Capt, Prof, etc.;
  • Two-letter abbreviations for countries («US», not «U.S.»);
  • Abbreviations beyond three letters (full caps for all except initialisms);
  • Words seldom abbreviated with lower case letters («PR», instead of «p.r.», or «pr»)
  • Names («FW de Klerk», «GB Whiteley», «Park JS»). A notable exception is The Economist which writes «Mr F. W. de Klerk».
  • Scientific units (see Measurement below).
• Acronyms are often referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalised. For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation can be abbreviated as «Nato» or «NATO», and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as «Sars» or «SARS» (compare with «laser» which has made the full transition to an English word and is rarely capitalised at all).
• Initialisms are always written in capitals; for example the «British Broadcasting Corporation» is abbreviated to «BBC», never «Bbc». An initialism is similar to acronym but is not pronounced as a word.
• When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10°C). (This is contrary to the SI standard; see below.)

Miscellaneous and general rules

• A doubled letter appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as in Welsh the double «l» is a separate sound: «Ll. George» for (British prime minister) David Lloyd George.
• Some titles, such as «Reverend» and «Honourable», are spelt out when preceded by «the», rather than as «Rev.» or «Hon.» respectively. This is true for most British publications, and some in the United States.
• A repeatedly used abbreviation should be spelt out for identification on its first occurrence in a written or spoken passage. Abbreviations likely to be unfamiliar to many readers should be avoided.

Measurement shorthand – symbol or abbreviation

Writers often use shorthand to denote units of measure. Such shorthand can be an abbreviation, such as «in» for «inch» or can be a symbol such as «km» for «kilometre».

The shorthand «in» applies to English only – in Afrikaans for example, the shorthand «dm» is used for the equivalent Afrikaans word «duim».^[6] Since both «in» and «dm» are contractions of the same word, but in different languages, they are abbreviations. A symbol on the other hand, defined as «Mark or character taken as the conventional sign of some object or idea or process»^[7] applies the appropriate shorthand by substitution rather than by contraction. Since the shorthand for kilometre (Quilômetro in Portuguese or Χιλιόμετρο in Greek) is «km» in both languages and the letter «k» does not appear in the longhand of either translation, «km» is a symbol as it is a substitution rather than a contraction.

In the International System of Units (SI) manual^[8] the word «symbol» is used consistently to define the shorthand used to represent the various SI units of measure. The manual also defines the way in which units should be written, the principal rules being:

• The conventions for upper and lower case letters must be observed – for example 1 MW (megawatts) is equal to 1,000,000,000 mW (milliwatts).
• No periods should be inserted between letters – for example «m.s» (which is an approximation of «m·s», which correctly uses middle dot) is the symbol for «metres multiplied by seconds», but «ms» is the symbol for milliseconds.
• No periods should follow the symbol unless the syntax of the sentence demands otherwise (for example a full stop at the end of a sentence).
• The singular and plural versions of the symbol are identical – not all languages use the letter «s» to denote a plural.

Syllabic abbreviation

A syllabic abbreviation is an abbreviation formed from (usually) initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police. It is basically a variant of the acronym.

Syllabic abbreviations are usually written using lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter.

Syllabic abbreviations should be distinguished from portmanteaus.^{[clarification needed]}

Usage

Different languages

Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English or French. The United States Navy, however, often uses syllabic abbreviations, as described below.

On the other hand, they prevailed in Germany under the Nazis and in the Soviet Union for naming the plethora of new bureaucratic organisations. For example, Gestapo stands for Geheime Staats-Polizei, or «secret state police». Similarly, Comintern stands for the Communist International. This has caused syllabic abbreviations to have negative connotation, notwithstanding that such abbreviations were used in Germany even before the Nazis came to power, e.g., Schupo for Schutzpolizei.

Syllabic abbreviations were also typical for the German language used in the German Democratic Republic, e.g. Stasi for Staatssicherheit («state security», the secret police) or Vopo for Volkspolizist («people’s policeman»).

East Asian languages whose writing uses Chinese-originated ideograms instead of an alphabet form abbreviations similarly by using key characters from a term or phrase. For example, in Japanese the term for the United Nations, kokusai rengō (国際連合) is often abbreviated to kokuren (国連). (Such abbreviations are called ryakugo (略語) in Japanese). The syllabic abbreviation is frequently used for universities: for instance, Běidà (北大) for Běijīng Dàxué (北京大学, Peking University) and Tōdai (東大) for Tōkyō daigaku (東京大学, University of Tokyo).

Organisations

Syllabic abbreviations are preferred by the US Navy as it increases readability amidst the large number of initialisms that would otherwise have to fit into the same acronyms. Hence DESRON 6 is used (in the full capital form) to mean «Destroyer Squadron 6», while COMNAVAIRLANT would be «Commander, Naval Air Force (in the) Atlantic.»

See also

• Clipping (morphology)
• The abbreviations used in the 1913 edition of Webster’s dictionary
• List of acronyms and initialisms
• List of classical abbreviations
• List of medieval abbreviations
• List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions
• List of abbreviations in photography

References

External links

• Abbreviations.com – a 10 years old directory of acronyms and abbreviations.
• Acronym Geek – dictionary of multilingual acronyms and abbreviations.
• All Acronyms — a database of acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations (over 750,000 entries)
• AcronymCreator.net – a language tool to make new meaningful acronyms and abbreviations
• Smart Define – a visitor-driven database of abbreviations from various languages.