A reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence. Initialisms or alphabetisms reflect the separate pronunciation of the initial letters of the constituent words (TV, COD); acronyms are pronounced as single words (NATO, laser); clipped forms or clippings are reductions of longer forms, usually removing the end of the word (ad from advertisement), but sometimes the beginning (plane), or both beginning and ending together (flu); and blends combine parts of two words (sitcom, motel).
Types of abbreviations
Apart from the common form of shortening one word, there are other types of abbreviations.
Syllabic abbreviation
A syllabic abbreviation (SA) is an abbreviation formed from (usually) initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol for International police, but should be distinguished from portmanteaux. They are usually written in lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter.
Use in different languages
Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English or French, but are common in certain languages, like German and Russian. This has given syllabic abbreviations a negative connotation, even though they were used in Germany before the Nazis, such as Schupo for Schutzpolizist. Syllabic abbreviations were also typical of German language used in the German Democratic Republic, for example, Stasi for Staatssicherheit ("state security", the secret police and secret service) or Vopo for Volkspolizist ("people's policeman").
Some syllabic abbreviations from Russian that are familiar to English speakers include samizdat and kolkhoz.
Orwell's novel 1984 uses fictional syllabic abbreviations like "Engsoc" (English Socialism) to evoke the use of language under the Nazi and Soviet regimes.
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.
Usage of syllabic abbreviations in 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.
Style conventions
In modern English there are several conventions for abbreviations and the choice may be confusing. When abbreviating words spelled with lower case letters, there is no need for capitalization, therefore no need for a consistent rule. Use of periods (full stops) and spaces, for example when abbreviating United States, should one write "US", "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. a notable instance in American English is to write United States, European Union, and United Nations as U.S., EU, and UN respectively. While users of British English often abbreviate in the same manner, it is more common in formal writing that abbreviations are written with full stops if the word has been cut at the point of abbreviation (for example, "Street" — "St[reet]" — becomes "St."), but not otherwise ("Saint" — "S[ain]t" — becomes "St"); a third standard removes the full stops from all abbreviations (both "Saint" and "Street" become "St"). Thus in the United Kingdom, titles such as "Doctor", "Mister" and "Mistress" are commonly abbreviated as "Dr", "Mr", and "Mrs" respectively, but they are also frequently written, as in Canada and the U.S., as "Dr.", "Mr." Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since "stood the test of time" by entering the vocabulary as generic words are no longer abbreviated with capital letters nor with any periods — sonar, radar, lidar, laser, and scuba, for example. Because the apostrophe most often represents possession or a contraction, some style guides prefer that it not be used at all with abbreviations, but only with individual letters — "Dot all your i's and cross all your t's!"
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. 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; rather, they are typically abbreviated without periods and in uppercase letters. 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. 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 not have had full stops in any case — see above) Capt, Prof, etc.; Two-letter 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 letters (full caps for all except initialisms); 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 (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 (100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10ºC). A doubled letter also appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names, as in Welsh the double "l" is a separate sound: "Ll. It is usually advised to spell out the abbreviation where it is new or unfamiliar to the reader (UNESCO in a magazine about music, because it refers to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, whose work does not concern music).Measurement
The SI international system has a clearly defined set of base units, from which other "derived" units may be obtained. The abbreviations, or more accurately "symbols" (using Roman letters or Greek in the case of ohm) for these units are also clearly defined together with a set of prefixes, themselves symbolised (abbreviated) with Roman letters (Greek in the singular case of micro, µ), denoting powers of ten. In the SI international system of units there should never be a period after or inside the unit; and 10 k.m are wrong — the only correct form is 10 km (only followed with a period when at the end of a sentence). Placing a period "within" a unit will alter its meaning, as a period is used in the SI system to form compound units and denotes multiplication. The "m.s" here is a compound unit formed from the product of two fundamental SI units — metre and second. The case of letters (uppercase or lowercase) is also an important part of the SI system and the case should never be changed because of a misguided attempt to follow an abbreviation style. Units named after people use a symbol of an upper case first letter (S, Pa, A, V, N, Wb, W), but spelt out in full in lower case, (siemens, pascal, ampere, volt, newton, weber and watt). Likewise the abbreviations of the prefixes denoting powers of ten are case sensitive — m (milli) is a thousandth, M (mega) is a million times, so by inadvertent changes of case one may introduce (in this example) an error of a factor of 1 000 000 000. When written out in full, lowercase is used for both the prefix and the unit, for example, megampere for MA, millivolt for mV, nanometre for nm, gigacandela for Gcd. f 10−18 atto a 10−21 zepto z 10−24 yocto yHistory
After World War II, 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. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: "M."
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 abbreviate two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but surprisingly, not personal computer (PC) or television (TV), which is a source of confusion. Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations completely.
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