How to use acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms

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?

How to use acronyms — **NNCBTPSNBRTASTSAFW** “Names not commonly before the public should not be reduced to acronyms solely to save a few words.” *Image by OneSideProFoto*

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:

These losses are called IBNR, for incurred but not reported. …

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:

Indeed, in some cases (involving, say, product liability or embezzlement) the insured itself will not yet be aware that a loss has occurred. Even when companies have the best of intentions, it’s not easy to reserve properly. …

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:

… I’ve told the story in the past about the fellow traveling abroad whose sister called to tell him that their dad had died. The brother replied that it was impossible for him to get home for the funeral; he volunteered, however, to shoulder its cost. Upon returning, the brother received a bill from the mortuary for $4,500, which he promptly paid. A month later, and a month after that also, he paid $10 pursuant to an add-on invoice. When a third $10 invoice came, he called his sister for an explanation. “Oh,” she replied.”‘I forgot to tell you. We buried dad in a rented suit.”

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.”

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