EXPLANATION If a word is shortened by using only the first few letters of the word (for example, Cres. for Crescent), we are abbreviating the word (i.e. making a “brief” version of the word). The convention for showing this is to place a full stop after the abbreviation. Other examples are etc. for etcetera and Feb. for February.
Another way of abbreviating is to take the initial letters of a few words and put a full stop after each letter: for example, W.H.O. for World Health Organization where each of the three words has been abbreviated to one letter! This form of abbreviation is called an acronym.
The term “acronym” comes from Greek: acro (height, top) and onym (name). Thus, acronyms are made up by taking the first (top) letter (or letters) of each of a series of words. Thus we have N.S.W. for New South Wales and U.N. for United Nations.
While full stops are still used to indicate some abbreviations, towards the end of the twentieth century, styles changed - a change no doubt accelerated by the advent of mobile phones and text messaging. This section explains current conventions in Australia - and a little bit about how and why the conventions have evolved - so that you will recognise and understand the use of alternative conventions in older texts, overseas texts, postal addresses, scientific work and other places.
Acronyms
Once, terms such as Q.A.N.T.A.S. (Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services) and U.N.I.C.E.F. (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) were abbreviated using the standard method of inserting full stops. However, because words such as Qantas and UNICEF can be pronounced as words in their own right, very quickly the convention developed of treating such acronyms as words - and the full stops were dropped. Many of us would not remember what words acronyms such as Qantas, scuba, radar or maybe even Anzac originally came from.
You will realize that there are two sorts of acronyms - those that can be pronounced as words and those that cannot. Because of this, grammarians have invented a new term: initialisms. Because of the existence of these two terms, some grammarians prefer to use the term acronym for pronounceable words and the term initialism for non-pronounceable “acronyms”.Note that it is common practice in British and Australian usage to start many pronounceable acronyms with a capital and then use lower case, for example Qantas (even on the Qantas website) Anzac, Interpol, Unicef. American usage tends to favour retaining the capitals, for example COVID rather than Covid, AIDS rather than Aids. If an acronym is now thought of just as an everyday word rather than an acronym, it is usually shown as completely lower case: scuba, laser, radar, sonar. With such words, we tend not to think at all about what the acronym stands for. It is not “wrong” to capitalize those; it is just not common usage.
Initialisms
Abbreviations such as N.S.W. and U.N., have followed the way of pronounceable acronyms and we now write them without full stops as well. (Of course, it is not wrong to insert the full stops. Just be consistent.)
- NSW
- UN
- NE (north-east)
- SSW (south-south-west) and all the other points of the compass
- FAQ (frequently asked questions)
- SMS (short messaging service)
Because they use the initial letters of words (but are not pronounceable acronyms) we call such abbreviations initialisms. With text messaging and other short-form social media such as Twitter, new initialisms are being invented all the time. OMG! BTW/btw, because messaging is easier if capitals aren’t used, there is a tendency to use lower case in that context.
Contractions
To understand abbreviations properly, we also need to be able to distinguish them from contractions. Abbreviations shorten a word by dropping letters from the ends of words. By contrast, contractions shorten a word by keeping the first and last letter and dropping one or more of the internal letters, so Mister becomes Mr and Queensland becomes Qld.
It would be good if the difference between abbreviations and contractions were as simple as that. However, inconsistencies confuse the issue, as do differences between the way Americans and other English-speakers around the world punctuate abbreviations. We can see this if we examine terms used in addresses and titles, for example, Road, Street, Mister and Doctor. These are contracted to Rd, St, Mr and Dr - and note that they are contractions, not abbreviations. Since apostrophes are used to signal where letters have been left out in a contraction, the logical shortened forms would be R’d, S’t, M’r and D’r. Unfortunately, styles are not always entirely logical. In the USA, these contractions are treated as abbreviations and followed by full stops: Rd., St., Dr., Mr. - and this used to be what was done in Australia too. However, several decades ago, Australia changed, and now these one-word contractions are written with no punctuation: that is, with no full stops or apostrophes. This no-punctuation style is also used in New Zealand and the UK - but Canada is different again.
Metric units and chemical symbols
There are some groups of abbreviations that never have full stops, whatever the last letter is. Metric units (for example, kg, mm, W) and chemical symbols (for example, H, Au, NaCl) are two groups that you will come across in this category.
Addresses on envelopes
Nowadays, postal services use scanners to sort envelopes and so they prefer that all punctuation be left out on envelopes. (Note, though, that within the body of a text, it is appropriate to punctuate addresses.)
Abbreviations that do use full stops
Obviously, the ‘rules’ for abbreviations are a minefield! You may wish to use the KIS (keep it simple) principle and, if abbreviations do not fall into any of the above categories, just use full stops to indicate abbreviations. This is nearly always with short forms of single words, where the last letter of the abbreviation is not the same as the last letter of the full word. It is okay to do this even if some grammar books recommend something different. If you practise using full stops, you will be able to abbreviate appropriately in more formal contexts, such as academic writing. Here are some examples:
- Names: J.F. Kennedy, J.R.R. Tolkien, M.S. Dhoni
- Titles: Prof. Daniel Sommers, Maj.-Gen. Jeffrey, Rev. Tim Costello
- Latin abbreviations: a.m., e.g., etc., p.m.
- Others: b. (born), Exod. (Biblical book of Exodus), Is. (Island), Inc. (Incorporated), Jan. (January), max. (maximum), Tues. (Tuesday)