An abbreviation (from Latin brevis , meaning "short" ) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction , initialism (which includes acronym) or crasis .
93-524: SmartTAG ( acronym in Malay for Sistem Membayar Automatik Rangkaian Tol or "Toll Network Automatic Payment Systems") is an on-board unit (OBU) vehicle-based device used as an electronic toll collection (ETC) system over long distances (maximum 15 metres) to complement Touch 'n Go , a card-based system. It was first introduced in Malaysia in 1999 and is also used as an Entrance Access Security. SmartTAG
186-428: A numeronym . For example, "i18n" abbreviates " internationalization ", a computer-science term for adapting software for worldwide use; the "18" represents the 18 letters that come between the first and the last in "internationalization". Similarly, "localization" can be abbreviated "l10n"; " multilingualization " "m17n"; and " accessibility " "a11y". In addition to the use of a specific number replacing that many letters,
279-645: A single word ("television" or "transvestite", for instance), and is in general spelled without punctuation (except in the plural). Although "PS" stands for the single English word " postscript " or the Latin postscriptum , it is often spelled with periods ("P.S.") as if parsed as Latin post scriptum instead. The slash ('/', or solidus ) is sometimes used to separate the letters in an acronym, as in "N/A" ("not applicable, not available") and "c/o" ("care of"). Inconveniently long words used frequently in related contexts can be represented according to their letter count as
372-507: A 1940 translation of a novel by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger . It is an unsettled question in English lexicography and style guides whether it is legitimate to use the word acronym to describe forms that use initials but are not pronounced as a word. While there is plenty of evidence that acronym is used widely in this way, some sources do not acknowledge this usage, reserving
465-625: A different meaning. Medical literature has been struggling to control the proliferation of acronyms, including efforts by the American Academy of Dermatology. Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices: for example the colors of the rainbow are ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). They are also used as mental checklists: in aviation GUMPS stands for gas-undercarriage-mixture-propeller-seat belts. Other mnemonic acronyms include CAN SLIM in finance, PAVPANIC in English grammar, and PEMDAS in mathematics. It
558-461: A joint venture with UEM to form Infrared Advance Technology Sdn Bhd (IRAT). The SmartTAG is currently priced at RM130 per unit inclusive of free Touch 'n Go card with RM10 reload value. This is a subsidised price as UEM has to pay royalty to EFKON for each SmartTag assembled by IRAT. Built on a non-stop Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) philosophy, SmartTAG incorporated infra-red communication that communicated with infra-red transceivers mounted at
651-781: A medial decimal point . Particularly in British and Commonwealth English , all such punctuation marking acronyms and other capitalized abbreviations is now uncommon and considered either unnecessary or incorrect. The presence of all-capital letters is now thought sufficient to indicate the nature of the UK , the EU , and the UN . Forms such as the U.S.A. for "the United States of America " are now considered to indicate American or North American English . Even within those dialects, such punctuation
744-407: A period when the letters are pronounced individually, as in " K.G.B. ", but not when pronounced as a word, as in " NATO ". The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the punctuation scheme. When a multiple-letter abbreviation is formed from a single word, periods are in general not used, although they may be common in informal usage. "TV", for example, may stand for
837-480: 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), and Arbanon —which
930-555: A plural of an initialization without an apostrophe can also be used for a number, or a letter. Examples: For units of measure, the same form is used for both singular and plural. Examples: When an abbreviation contains more than one period, Hart's Rules recommends putting the s after the final one. Examples: However, the same plurals may be rendered less formally as: 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. However,
1023-557: 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. A period (a.k.a. full stop)
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#17327873696971116-436: A single word, such as NATO (as distinct from B-B-C )" but adds later "In everyday use, acronym is often applied to abbreviations that are technically initialisms, since they are pronounced as separate letters." The Chicago Manual of Style acknowledges the complexity ("Furthermore, an acronym and initialism are occasionally combined (JPEG), and the line between initialism and acronym is not always clear") but still defines
1209-517: A symbol such as "km" for " kilometre ". In the International System of Units (SI) manual 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: A syllabic abbreviation is usually formed from the initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police . It
1302-515: A twentieth-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda , an acronym for
1395-502: A word rather than as a sequence of letters. In this sense, NASA / ˈ n æ s ə / is an acronym but USA / j uː ɛ s ˈ eɪ / is not. The broader sense of acronym , ignoring pronunciation, is its original meaning and in common use. Dictionary and style-guide editors dispute whether the term acronym can be legitimately applied to abbreviations which are not pronounced as words, and they do not agree on acronym spacing , casing , and punctuation . The phrase that
1488-738: A word to a single letter was common in both Greek and Roman writing. 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 .)" 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 early English . Manuscripts of copies of
1581-471: A word, an abbreviation is not an acronym." In contrast, some style guides do support it, whether explicitly or implicitly. The 1994 edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage defends the usage on the basis of a claim that dictionaries do not make a distinction. The BuzzFeed style guide describes CBS and PBS as "acronyms ending in S". Acronymy, like retronymy , is a linguistic process that has existed throughout history but for which there
1674-677: A word. American English dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster , Dictionary.com's Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary as well as the British Oxford English Dictionary and the Australian Macquarie Dictionary all include a sense in their entries for acronym equating it with initialism , although The American Heritage Dictionary criticizes it with
1767-488: Is a question about how to pluralize acronyms. Often a writer will add an 's' following an apostrophe, as in "PC's". However, Kate L. Turabian 's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , 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" but "Ph.D.'s". The style guides of
1860-568: 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, the syllabic abbreviation SoHo (Southern Hollywood) refers to the southern portion of the Hollywood neighborhood. Partially syllabic abbreviations are preferred by
1953-425: Is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation . For some, an initialism or alphabetism , connotes this general meaning, and an acronym is a subset with a narrower definition: an initialism pronounced as
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#17327873696972046-478: 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. Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English. Some UK government agencies such as Ofcom (Office of Communications) and
2139-777: Is an alternative way used to describe all Albanian lands. 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 ( protection police or uniform department ) begat SchuPo . Along
2232-721: Is becoming increasingly uncommon. Some style guides , such as that of the BBC , no longer require punctuation to show ellipsis ; some even proscribe it. Larry Trask , American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation , states categorically that, in British English , "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete." Nevertheless, some influential style guides , many of them American , still require periods in certain instances. For example, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends following each segment with
2325-411: Is common for grammatical contractions (e.g. don't , y'all , and ain't ) and for contractions marking unusual pronunciations (e.g. a'ight , cap'n , and fo'c'sle for "all right", "captain", and "forecastle"). By the early twentieth century, it was standard to use a full stop/period/point , especially in the cases of initialisms and acronyms. Previously, especially for Latin abbreviations , this
2418-418: Is controversy as to which should be used. One generally accepted rule is to be consistent in a body of work. To this end, publishers may express their preferences in a style guide . Some controversies that arise are described below. 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
2511-631: Is especially important for paper media, where no search utility is available to find the first use.) It also gives students a convenient review list to memorize the important acronyms introduced in a textbook chapter. Expansion at first use and abbreviation keys originated in the print era, but they are equally useful for electronic text . While acronyms provide convenience and succinctness for specialists, they often degenerate into confusing jargon . This may be intentional, to exclude readers without domain-specific knowledge. New acronyms may also confuse when they coincide with an already existing acronym having
2604-464: Is generally said as two letters, but IPsec for Internet Protocol Security is usually pronounced as / ˌ aɪ ˈ p iː s ɛ k / or / ˈ ɪ p s ɛ k / , along with variant capitalization like "IPSEC" and "Ipsec". Pronunciation may even vary within a single speaker's vocabulary, depending on narrow contexts. As an example, the database programming language SQL is usually said as three letters, but in reference to Microsoft's implementation
2697-459: Is not uncommon for acronyms to be cited in a kind of false etymology , called a folk etymology , for a word. Such etymologies persist in popular culture but have no factual basis in historical linguistics , and are examples of language-related urban legends . For example, " cop " is commonly cited as being derived, it is presumed, from "constable on patrol", and " posh " from " port outward, starboard home ". With some of these specious expansions,
2790-551: Is powered from automobile auxiliary power outlet instead. SmartTAG lanes are available at most expressway toll plazas. To diversify the usages of SmartTAG and to attract further subscription of SmartTAG, Teras Teknologi with co-operation from Nusajaya Land Sdn Bhd, developer of Iskandar Puteri implemented a secure Entrance Access Security for Ledang Heights Bungalow Park. Touted as the Beverly Hills of Johor , Ledang Heights consists of 571 bungalow lots situated off
2883-695: Is sometimes used to signify abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this convention is best practice. According to Hart's Rules , a word shortened by dropping letters from the end terminates with a period, whereas a word shorted by dropping letters from the middle does not. Fowler's Modern English Usage says a period is used for both of these shortened forms, but recommends against this practice: advising it only for end-shortened words and lower-case initialisms; not for middle-shortened words and upper-case initialisms. Some British style guides, such as for The Guardian and The Economist , disallow periods for all abbreviations. In American English ,
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2976-415: Is traditionally pronounced like the word sequel . In writing for a broad audience, the words of an acronym are typically written out in full at its first occurrence within a given text. Expansion At First Use (EAFU) benefits readers unfamiliar with the acronym. Another text aid is an abbreviation key which lists and expands all acronyms used, a reference for readers who skipped past the first use. (This
3069-584: Is typically US . There are multiple ways to pluralize an abbreviation. Sometimes this accomplished by adding an apostrophe and an s ( 's ), as in "two PC's have broken screens". But, some find this confusing since the notation can indicate possessive case . And, this style is deprecated by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian , 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". For example, "DVDs" and "URLs" and "Ph.D.'s", while
3162-522: Is used as the preferred term, acronym refers more specifically to when the abbreviation is pronounced as a word rather than as separate letters; examples include SWAT and NASA . Initialisms, contractions and crasis share some semantic and phonetic functions, and are connected by the term abbreviation in loose parlance. In early times, abbreviations may have been common due to the effort involved in writing (many inscriptions were carved in stone) or to provide secrecy via obfuscation . Reduction of
3255-516: The Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year." However, although acronymic words seem not to have been employed in general vocabulary before the twentieth century (as Wilton points out), the concept of their formation is treated as effortlessly understood (and evidently not novel) in an Edgar Allan Poe story of the 1830s, " How to Write a Blackwood Article ", which includes
3348-623: The Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association prohibit apostrophes from being used to pluralize acronyms regardless of periods (so "compact discs" would be "CDs" or "C.D.s"), whereas The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage requires an apostrophe when pluralizing all abbreviations regardless of periods (preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's"). Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods appear especially complex: for example, "the C.D.'s' labels" (the labels of
3441-496: The Modern Language Association explicitly says, "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". Also, the American Psychological Association specifically says, "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". Forming
3534-690: 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". 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
3627-539: The Restoration witticism arranging the names of some members of Charles II 's Committee for Foreign Affairs to produce the "CABAL" ministry . OK , a term of disputed origin, dates back at least to the early nineteenth century and is now used around the world. Acronyms are used most often to abbreviate names of organizations and long or frequently referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms; some well-known examples from
3720-480: The "belief" that the etymology is acronymic has clearly been tongue-in-cheek among many citers, as with "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" for " golf ", although many other (more credulous ) people have uncritically taken it for fact. Taboo words in particular commonly have such false etymologies: " shit " from "ship/store high in transit" or "special high-intensity training" and " fuck " from "for unlawful carnal knowledge", or "fornication under consent/command of
3813-463: The 160-character SMS limit, and to save time, acronyms such as "GF" ("girlfriend"), "LOL" ("laughing out loud"), and "DL" ("download" or "down low") have become popular. Some prescriptivists disdain texting acronyms and abbreviations as decreasing clarity, or as failure to use "pure" or "proper" English. Others point out that languages have always continually changed , and argue that acronyms should be embraced as inevitable, or as innovation that adapts
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3906-461: The 18 letters between the initial "i" and the final "n"). Authors of expository writing will sometimes capitalize or otherwise distinctively format the initials of the expansion for pedagogical emphasis (for example, writing: "the onset of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)" or "the onset of c ongestive h eart f ailure (CHF)"). Capitalization like this, however, conflicts with the convention of English orthography, which generally reserves capitals in
3999-459: 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. This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese , with which 10% or more of
4092-661: The 20th century. 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. 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 (itself frequently abbreviated to SARS-CoV-2 , partly an initialism). In Albanian, syllabic acronyms are sometimes used for composing
4185-466: The British press may render it "Nato"), but uses lower case in " Unicef " (from "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund") because it is more than four letters, and to style it in caps might look ungainly (flirting with the appearance of "shouting capitals"). While abbreviations typically exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), this is not always
4278-564: The U.S. Navy, is "COMCRUDESPAC", which stands for "commander, cruisers destroyers Pacific"; it is also seen as "ComCruDesPac". Inventors are encouraged to anticipate the formation of acronyms by making new terms "YABA-compatible" ("yet another bloody acronym"), meaning the term's acronym can be pronounced and is not an offensive word: "When choosing a new name, be sure it is 'YABA-compatible'." Acronym use has been further popularized by text messaging on mobile phones with short message service (SMS), and instant messenger (IM). To fit messages into
4371-768: 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 ( see below ) and Russian ( see below ) contractions in
4464-560: The United States are among the " alphabet agencies " (jokingly referred to as " alphabet soup ") created under the New Deal by Franklin D. Roosevelt (himself known as "FDR"). Business and industry also coin acronyms prolifically. The rapid advance of science and technology also drives the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more pronounceable names. One representative example, from
4557-411: The acronym may use normal case rules, e.g. it would appear generally in lower case, but with an initial capital when starting a sentence or when in a title. Once knowledge of the words underlying such an acronym has faded from common recall, the acronym may be termed an anacronym . Examples of anacronyms are the words " scuba ", " radar ", and " laser ". The word "an acro nym" should not be confused with
4650-493: The acronym stands for is called its expansion . The meaning of an acronym includes both its expansion and the meaning of its expansion. The word acronym is formed from the Greek roots akro- , meaning 'height, summit, or tip', and -nym , 'name'. This neoclassical compound appears to have originated in German , with attestations for the German form Akronym appearing as early as 1921. Citations in English date to
4743-590: The adoption of acronyms was modern warfare, with its many highly technical terms. While there is no recorded use of military acronyms dating from the American Civil War (acronyms such as "ANV" for " Army of Northern Virginia " post-date the war itself), they became somewhat common in World War I , and by World War II they were widespread even in the slang of soldiers, who referred to themselves as G.I.s . The widespread, frequent use of acronyms across
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#17327873696974836-460: The apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes: 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. Publications based in the U.S. tend to follow
4929-506: The apostrophe should be reserved for the possessive ("the TV's antenna"). In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the acronym is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE.UU. , for Estados Unidos ('United States'). This old convention is still sometimes followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as SS. for Saints , pp. for
5022-1163: The case. Sometimes function words are included to make a pronounceable acronym, such as CORE ( Congress of Racial Equality ). Sometimes the letters representing these words are written in lower case, such as in the cases of "TfL" (" Transport for London ") and LotR ( The Lord of the Rings ); this usually occurs when the acronym represents a multi-word proper noun. Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal ) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters, as in "4GL" (" fourth generation language ") or "G77" (" Group of 77 "). Large numbers may use metric prefixes , as with " Y2K " for "Year 2000". Exceptions using initials for numbers include " TLA " ("three-letter acronym/abbreviation") and "GoF" (" Gang of Four "). Abbreviations using numbers for other purposes include repetitions, such as " A2DP " ("Advanced Audio Distribution Profile"), " W3C " ("World Wide Web Consortium"), and T3 ( Trends, Tips & Tools for Everyday Living ); pronunciation, such as " B2B " ("business to business"); and numeronyms , such as "i18n" ("internationalization"; "18" represents
5115-606: The ceilings of toll plazas to allow vehicle drivers to drive through SmartTAG dedicated lanes and pay toll without stopping. It is designed to process up to 1,200 vehicles per hour. Prior to the introduction of SmartTAG, several different types of non-stop ETC were already being used in Malaysia: SmartTAG was officially launched on 15 March 1999, phasing out PLUS TAG at over 20 plazas of Projek Lebuhraya Utara-Selatan (PLUS) / North–South Expressway . In December 2003, Minister of Works, Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu directed
5208-413: The compact discs). In some instances, however, an apostrophe may increase clarity: for example, if the final letter of an abbreviation is "S", as in "SOS's" (although abbreviations ending with S can also take "-es", e.g. "SOSes"), or when pluralizing an abbreviation that has periods. A particularly rich source of options arises when the plural of an acronym would normally be indicated in a word other than
5301-564: The contrived acronym "P.R.E.T.T.Y.B.L.U.E.B.A.T.C.H." The use of Latin and Neo-Latin terms in vernaculars has been pan-European and pre-dates modern English. Some examples of acronyms in this class are: The earliest example of a word derived from an acronym listed by the OED is "abjud" (now " abjad "), formed from the original first four letters of the Arabic alphabet in the late eighteenth century. Some acrostics pre-date this, however, such as
5394-438: The dictionary entries and style guide recommendations regarding the term acronym through the twentieth century did not explicitly acknowledge or support the expansive sense. The Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage from 1994 is one of the earliest publications to advocate for the expansive sense, and all the major dictionary editions that include a sense of acronym equating it with initialism were first published in
5487-664: The exclusive sense for acronym and its earliest citation was from 1943. In early December 2010, Duke University researcher Stephen Goranson published a citation for acronym to the American Dialect Society e-mail discussion list which refers to PGN being pronounced "pee-gee-enn", antedating English language usage of the word to 1940. Linguist Ben Zimmer then mentioned this citation in his December 16, 2010 " On Language " column about acronyms in The New York Times Magazine . By 2011,
5580-806: The expressway to Singapore, North–South Expressway Central Link (NSECL/ELITE) and within six kilometres from the Sultan Abu Bakar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Complex. SmartTAG offer both security and convenience. Security is provided by two layers of electronic recognition required to access the perimeter; a SmartTAG unit and an assigned smartcard registered to the security department. These units have to be detected simultaneously on authorised vehicles to gain entry into Ledang Heights. SmartTAG and card assigned can also be used in all highways that adopt SmartTAG as an EPS. Plans are underway for further adaptations of SmartTAG in other prestigious housing developments. Acronym An acronym
5673-763: The final word if spelled out in full. A classic example is "Member of Parliament", which in plural is "Members of Parliament". It is possible then to abbreviate this as "M's P", which was fairly common in mid-twentieth-century Australian news writing (or similar ), and used by former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley . This usage is less common than forms with "s" at the end, such as "MPs", and may appear dated or pedantic. In common usage, therefore, "weapons of mass destruction" becomes "WMDs", "prisoners of war" becomes "POWs", and "runs batted in" becomes "RBIs". Abbreviations that come from single, rather than multiple, words – such as "TV" ("television") – are usually pluralized without apostrophes ("two TVs"); most writers feel that
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#17327873696975766-464: The first letter of acronyms, reserving all-caps styling for initialisms, writing the pronounced acronyms "Nato" and "Aids" in mixed case, but the initialisms "USA" and "FBI" in all caps. For example, this is the style used in The Guardian , and BBC News typically edits to this style (though its official style guide, dating from 2003, still recommends all-caps ). The logic of this style is that
5859-428: 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
5952-456: 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
6045-551: The implementation of a single ETC nationwide as a form of standardisation and convenience of use for road users. The directive requires all major toll operators in Malaysia to have a minimum of 2 Touch 'n Go and 1 SmartTAG lanes per direction at every plaza. The directive was gradually implemented by all major toll operators on 1 July 2004 and marked the cessation of other types of non-stop ETCs in Malaysia. In 2004, SmartTAG expanded as entrance access security for residential areas. It
6138-435: The king". In English, abbreviations have previously been marked by a wide variety of punctuation . Obsolete forms include using an overbar or colon to show the ellipsis of letters following the initial part. The forward slash is still common in many dialects for some fixed expressions—such as in w/ for "with" or A/C for " air conditioning "—while only infrequently being used to abbreviate new terms. The apostrophe
6231-500: The label "usage problem". However, many English language dictionaries, such as the Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary , Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary , Macmillan Dictionary , Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English , New Oxford American Dictionary , Webster's New World Dictionary , and Lexico from Oxford University Press do not acknowledge such a sense. Most of
6324-836: The language to changing circumstances. In this view, the modern practice is just the "proper" English of the current generation of speakers, much like the earlier abbreviation of corporation names on ticker tape or newspapers. Exact pronunciation of "word acronyms" (those pronounced as words rather than sounded out as individual letters) often vary by speaker population. These may be regional, occupational, or generational differences, or simply personal preference. For instance, there have been decades of online debate about how to pronounce GIF ( / ɡ ɪ f / or / dʒ ɪ f / ) and BIOS ( / ˈ b aɪ oʊ s / , / ˈ b aɪ oʊ z / , or / ˈ b aɪ ɒ s / ). Similarly, some letter-by-letter initialisms may become word acronyms over time, especially in combining forms: IP for Internet Protocol
6417-466: The middle of sentences for proper nouns; when following the AMA Manual of Style , this would instead be rendered as "the onset of congestive heart failure (CHF)". Abbreviation An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word with a trailing period. For example: etcetera is usually abbreviated etc. and abbreviation is sometimes abbreviated abbr. , abbrv. , or abbrev. . But sometimes
6510-466: The more general "x" can be used to replace an unspecified number of letters. Examples include "Crxn" for "crystallization" and the series familiar to physicians for history , diagnosis , and treatment ("hx", "dx", "tx"). Terms relating to a command structure may also sometimes use this formatting, for example gold, silver, and bronze levels of command in UK policing being referred to as Gx, Sx, and Bx. There
6603-487: 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: Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered
6696-729: The plural of 'pages', or mss. for manuscripts . The most common capitalization scheme seen with acronyms is all-uppercase ( all caps ). Small caps are sometimes used to make the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of some American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today , is to use small caps for acronyms longer than three letters; thus "U.S." and " FDR " in normal caps, but " nato " in small caps. The acronyms " AD " and " BC " are often smallcapped as well, as in: "From 4004 bc to ad 525 ". Where an acronym has linguistically taken on an identity as regular word,
6789-483: The pronunciation is reflected graphically by the capitalization scheme. However, it conflicts with conventional English usage of first-letter upper-casing as a marker of proper names in many cases; e.g. AIDS stands for acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome which is not a proper name, while Aids is in the style of one. Some style manuals also base the letters' case on their number. The New York Times , for example, keeps "NATO" in all capitals (while several guides in
6882-685: The publication of the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary added the expansive sense to its entry for acronym and included the 1940 citation. As the Oxford English Dictionary structures the senses in order of chronological development, it now gives the "initialism" sense first. English language usage and style guides which have entries for acronym generally criticize the usage that refers to forms that are not pronounceable words. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage says that acronym "denotes abbreviations formed from initial letters of other words and pronounced as
6975-835: 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 OrPo ( Ordnungspolizei , "order police");
7068-401: 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
7161-470: The sides of railroad cars (e.g., "Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad" → "RF&P"); on the sides of barrels and crates; and on ticker tape and newspaper stock listings (e.g. American Telephone and Telegraph Company → AT&T). Some well-known commercial examples dating from the 1890s through 1920s include " Nabisco " ("National Biscuit Company"), " Esso " (from "S.O.", from " Standard Oil "), and " Sunoco " ("Sun Oil Company"). Another field for
7254-556: The state KriPos together formed the "SiPo" ( Sicherheitspolizei , "security police"); and there was also the Gestapo ( Geheime Staatspolizei , "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",
7347-546: 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 . The National Institute of Standards and Technology sets the style for abbreviations of units. Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation: Writers often use shorthand to denote units of measure. Such shorthand can be an abbreviation, such as "in" for " inch " or can be
7440-476: The term acronym only for forms pronounced as a word, and using initialism or abbreviation for those that are not. Some sources acknowledge the usage, but vary in whether they criticize or forbid it, allow it without comment, or explicitly advocate it. Some mainstream English dictionaries from across the English-speaking world affirm a sense of acronym which does not require being pronounced as
7533-502: The terms as mutually exclusive. Other guides outright deny any legitimacy to the usage: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words says "Abbreviations that are not pronounced as words (IBM, ABC, NFL) are not acronyms; they are just abbreviations." Garner's Modern American Usage says "An acronym is made from the first letters or parts of a compound term. It's read or spoken as a single word, not letter by letter." The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says "Unless pronounced as
7626-469: The trailing period is not used for such shortened forms. A contraction is an abbreviation formed by replacing letters with an apostrophe. Examples include I'm for I am and li'l for little . An initialism or acronym is an abbreviation consisting of the initial letter of a sequence of words without other punctuation. For example, FBI ( /ˌɛf.biːˈaɪ/ ), USA ( /ˌjuː.ɛsˈeɪ/ ), IBM ( /ˌaɪ.biːˈɛm/ ), BBC ( /ˌbiː.biːˈsiː/ ). When initialism
7719-570: The twenty-first century. The trend among dictionary editors appears to be towards including a sense defining acronym as initialism : the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added such a sense in its 11th edition in 2003, and both the Oxford English Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary added such senses in their 2011 editions. The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary only included
7812-453: 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 . 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. In the past, some initialisms were styled with a period after each letter and a space between each pair. For example, U. S. , but today this
7905-536: The whole range of linguistic registers is relatively new in most languages, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-twentieth century. As literacy spread and technology produced a constant stream of new and complex terms, abbreviations became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common. In English, acronyms pronounced as words may be
7998-425: The word " an achro nym ", which is a type of misnomer. Words derived from an acronym by affixing are typically expressed in mixed case, so the root acronym is clear. For example, "pre-WWII politics", "post-NATO world", " DNase ". In some cases a derived acronym may also be expressed in mixed case. For example, " messenger RNA " and " transfer RNA " become "mRNA" and "tRNA". Some publications choose to capitalize only
8091-464: The words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated. 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 . In modern English, there are multiple conventions for abbreviation, and there
8184-516: Was designed, developed and manufactured by Teras Teknologi Sdn Bhd as an extension of the Touch 'n Go system, initially as a replacement of PLUS TAG. It is being marketed by Touch 'n Go Sdn Bhd (formerly Rangkaian Segar Sdn Bhd ) . The intellectual property rights to the SmartTAG belongs to an Austrian company known as EFKON Gmbh. The president of EFKON, Dr Helmut Rieder, was the one who set up
8277-511: Was done with a full space between every full word (e.g. A. D. , i. e. , and e. g. for " Anno Domini ", " id est ", and " exempli gratia "). This even included punctuation after both Roman and Arabic numerals to indicate their use in place of the full names of each number (e.g. LII. or 52. in place of "fifty-two" and "1/4." or "1./4." to indicate "one-fourth"). Both conventions have fallen out of common use in all dialects of English, except in places where an Arabic decimal includes
8370-545: Was first (currently only) deployed at Ledang Heights Bungalow Park, in Iskandar Puteri , Johor . On 8 August 2018, Touch 'n Go discontinued the sales of SmartTAG in favor of RFID -based Touch 'n Go eWallet which started its testing phase on the following month. However, LokaTAG, another authorized aftermarket SmartTAG manufacturer will provide an alternative device that will serves as drop-in replacement for SmartTAG. Unlike SmartTAG, it does not run on battery as it
8463-449: Was little to no naming , conscious attention, or systematic analysis until relatively recent times. Like retronymy, it became much more common in the twentieth century than it had formerly been. Ancient examples of acronymy (before the term "acronym" was invented) include the following: During the mid- to late nineteenth century, acronyms became a trend among American and European businessmen: abbreviating corporation names, such as on
8556-478: 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
8649-451: Was used for th , as in Þ ('the'). In modern times, ⟨Þ⟩ was often used (in the form ⟨y⟩ ) for promotional reasons, as in Y Olde Tea Shoppe . 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
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