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An abbreviation (from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''brevis'', meaning ''short'') 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.
Eg or EG may refer to:
In arts and media
* ''E.G.'' (EP), an EP by Goodshirt
* ''EG'' (magazine), a journal dedicated to chess endgame studies
* Eg White (born 1966), a British musician, songwriter and producer
* E.G. Records, a music record l ...
,
i.e. or
RSVP
RSVP is an initialism derived from the French phrase ''Répondez s'il vous plaît'', literally meaning "Respond, if you please", or just "Please respond", to require confirmation of an invitation. The initialism "RSVP" is no longer used much in ...
). Some types of abbreviations are
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s (some pronounceable, some
initialism
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s) or grammatical
contractions or
crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of ...
.
An abbreviation is a shortening by any of these or other methods.
Different types of abbreviation
Acronyms, initialisms, contractions and crasis share some
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
and
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
functions, and all four are connected by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance.
A initialism is an abbreviation pronounced by spelling out each letter, i.e.
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
(
),
USA
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
(
),
IBM (
),
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
(
)
A contraction is a reduction in the length of a word or phrase made by omitting certain of its letters or
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s. Consequently, contractions are a
subset
In mathematics, Set (mathematics), set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all Element (mathematics), elements of ''A'' are also elements of ''B''; ''B'' is then a superset of ''A''. It is possible for ''A'' and ''B'' to be equal; if they are ...
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
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
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
and
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
the reduction of words to single letters was common. 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, can be an abbreviation for many words, such as , , , , , , and .)" Many frequent abbreviations consisted of more than one letter: for example COS for ''consul'' and COSS for its
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
etc. plural ''consules''.
Abbreviations were frequently used in English from its earliest days. Manuscripts of copies of the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
poem ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'' used many abbreviations, for example the
Tironian et
Tironian notes ( la, notae Tironianae, links=no) are a set of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Ci ...
() or for ''and'', and for ''since'', so that "not much space is wasted". The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included a growth in the use of such abbreviations.
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.
In the
Early Modern English
Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
period, between the 15th and 17th centuries, the
thorn
Thorn(s) or The Thorn(s) may refer to:
Botany
* Thorns, spines, and prickles, sharp structures on plants
* ''Crataegus monogyna'', or common hawthorn, a plant species
Comics and literature
* Rose and Thorn, the two personalities of two DC Com ...
was used for ''th'', as in ('the'). In modern times, was often used (in the form ) for promotional reasons, as in .
During the growth of
philological
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as t ...
linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. Likewise, a century earlier in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term
OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.
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
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
supported message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the
GSM 03.38 character set), for instance. 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. More recently Twitter, a popular
social networking service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
, 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
A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
. Some questions which arise are shown below.
Lowercase letters
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
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
''Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford''—today published under the short title ''New Hart's Rules''—is an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press (OUP ...
, 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.
[ 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.
In ]American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, 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
The ''Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways'' (usually referred to as the ''Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices'', abbreviated MUTCD) is a document issued by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the Unit ...
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
References
Notes
References
Further reading
*
*
{{Latin phrases
Lists of Latin phrases, E ...
, Dr, Mr, MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...
, ICU, and hundreds of others contain no periods. The only exceptions are (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
Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigation, navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect o ...
, radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
, lidar
Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...
, laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
, snafu
SNAFU is an acronym that is widely used to stand for the sarcastic expression Situation normal: all fucked up. It is a well-known example of military acronym slang. It is sometimes bowdlerized to "all fouled up" or similar. It means that the ...
, and scuba
Scuba may refer to:
* Scuba diving
** Scuba set, the equipment used for scuba (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) diving
* Scuba, an in-memory database developed by Facebook
* Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array, either of two in ...
.
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
There is a question about how to pluralize abbreviations, particularly acronyms. Some writers tend to pluralize abbreviations by adding (apostrophe s), as in "two PC's have broken screens", although this notation typically indicates possessive case
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
. However, this style is not preferred by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian
Kate Larimore Turabian (born Laura Kate Larimore, February 26, 1893 – October 25, 1987) was an American educator who is best known for her book ''A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations''. In 2018 the Universi ...
, writing about style in academic writings, 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
The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
[Modern Language Association (MLA) Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th Edition 2009, subsection 3.2.7.g] explicitly says, "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". Also, the American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
specifically says,[Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), 5th Edition 2001, subsection 3.28][''Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association'', 6th Edition 2010, subsection 4.29] "without an apostrophe".
However, the 1999 style guide for ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' states that the addition of an apostrophe is necessary when pluralizing all abbreviations, preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's".
Following those who would generally omit the apostrophe, to form the plural of run batted in
A run batted in (RBI; plural RBIs ) is a statistic in baseball and softball that credits a batter for making a play that allows a run to be scored (except in certain situations such as when an error is made on the play). For example, if the bat ...
, simply add an s to the end of RBI.
*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 ''x''s 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.
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
''The Chicago Manual of Style'' (abbreviated in writing as ''CMOS'' or ''CMS'', or sometimes as ''Chicago'') is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writi ...
'' and the Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
. The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office
The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO; formerly the United States Government Printing Office) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States Federal government. The office produces and distributes information ...
. The National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
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 #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and ''