Abbreviation

For other uses, see Abbreviation (disambiguation).
Example of 15th-century Latin manuscript text with scribal abbreviations

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning "short"[1]) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym) or crasis.

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 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 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.[2]: p167 

  1. ^ "brevis/breve, brevis M". Latin is Simple Online Dictionary. Archived from the original on 29 March 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  2. ^ Ritter, R M (2005). New Hart's Rules: The handbook of style for writers and editors. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198610410. OCLC 225098030.