Avoid drowning readers in alphabet soup
Acronyms appear to speed communication. After all, if you can boil a multisyllabic pileup of words down into a handful of letters, that moves information faster, right?
Wrong.
“[Unfamiliar acronyms] create false economies,” write the editors of the SEC’s A Plain English Handbook. “They may save a few words, but they may also frustrate and force the reader to take more time and effort to understand the document.”
Acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms
What’s the difference between abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms?
- Acronyms: words formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (The word laser, for instance, is an acronym for the expression light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).
- Abbreviations: a shortened form of a word or phrase. (SKU, for instance, is the abbreviation for Stock Keeping Unit).
- Initialisms: an abbreviated form of a word consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (The initialism for the American Psychological Association, for example, is APA; for the United Kingdom, U.K.).
Besides, copy cluttered with capital letters looks like academic writing. It’s visually off-putting to readers because it looks as if it’s written in code.
So how do you avoid frustrating your readers with acronyms, in everything from blog posts to text messages?
How to handle acronyms
Here are six ways to avoid drowning your readers in alphabet soup that you won’t find in a style guide or publication manual:
1. Use familiar acronyms.
If the acronym is more familiar to your audience than the original term, go ahead and use it. “REITs,” for instance, may be easier to read when you’re writing to a group of real estate investors.
2. Use a generic instead of an acronym.
Assign a generic word to substitute for the original phrase. Generics like “the program,” “the policy” or “the plan” often make perfect substitutes for corporate acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms.
3. Spell out acronyms.
In one of his famous letters to shareholders, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, spells out an abbreviation:
4. Explain acronyms.
But spelling out the abbreviation isn’t enough. (Do you feel like you have a solid grounding in IBNR just because you know what the initials stand for? Didn’t think so.) So he clarifies the term with this explanation:
5. Illustrate acronyms.
That’s a little better. But I still don’t think I could explain IBNR to my friends. So Buffett illustrates the abbreviation with an apocryphal story:
There are a lot of ‘rented suits’ buried in the past operations of insurance companies.
6. Decipher alphabet soup.
Get help explaining acronyms with The Acronym Finder, a comprehensive database of acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms.
7. Skip the acronyms altogether.
As The Associated Press Stylebook counsels, “NNCBTPSNBRTASTSAFW.” That is, “Names not commonly before the public should not be reduced to acronyms solely to save a few words.”
What words will resonate with your readers?
Jargon. Buzzwords. Acronyms. They’re things that make your reader go “huh?” And we need to get them out of our message.
Learn how to translate the language of your organization into the language of your readers at Rev Up Readability — our tight-writing workshop starting Dec. 6.There, you’ll learn how to define terms the reader-friendly way (Hint: It’s not the way you learned in Journalism 101.) How to steal techniques from Warren Buffett to make complex technical information easier to understand — and more fun to read. Plus: you’ll boost social media reach and influence, media coverage and your organization’s authority.
Save $100 when you book by Aug. 15.
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Sources: Ann Wylie, Start Making Sense, Wylie Communications Inc., 1997
United States Securities and Exchange Commission, A Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents (PDF), August 1998
The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, Perseus Books Group, July 15, 2002
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