What are Acronyms?

Acronyms are abbreviations that are formed from the initial characters in a phrase or name.

Early examples of acronyms were found in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.

The first acronyms used in the English language, such as AM/PM, OK, BC/AD, date back to at least the early 19th century.

Today acronyms are widely used; most often to abbreviate names of organizations and professional terms. Every industry branch has hundreds or even thousands of related acronyms. Many companies or even products have their own proprietary acronyms. Military and government agencies frequently employ acronyms and abbreviations.

Acronyms in documentation

Current professional documentation reflects the ever increasing use of acronyms and abbreviations. A recent survey shows that 94% of documents contain acronyms and abbreviations.

In highly technical areas we use numerous acronyms and due to time constraints they are often not properly managed.

Rules for Acronym usage in documents

Define the acronym when it is first used. The first instance of the acronym should be immediately followed by its definition (abbreviation) in brackets. For example: GPS (Global Positioning System). This enables the reader to better understand the meaning of technical terms.

Define all proprietary and industry-related acronyms.

It is not necessary to define common acronyms such as laser, radar, sonar etc.

Do not treat company names as acronyms, for example AMD, MS, IBM etc.

An acronym should be defined only once.

Avoid using the same acronym with different definitions in the same document. For example: AWACS can be "Airborne Warning and Control System" or "Airsoft Warfare and Combat Squad".

Provide an List of Acronyms and Abbreviations (or glossary of terms) at the beginning or at the end of the document.

Acronym Tools

As mentioned above, every professional document should contain an accurate and well organized reference list for every acronym used (list of acronyms and abbreviations).

Unfortunately, maintaining acronyms is usually a laborious and time-consuming process. As a result, many documents include only partial lists of acronyms or even none at all.

Many readers (some of them your customers) may find it impossible to determine the meaning of an acronym in their documents.

Acronyms must be properly managed and there is software that will help you to achieve this. We would like to bring to your attention Acronyms Master Solution. This tool identifies all acronyms in Microsoft Word documents and automatically extracts possible definitions. It also refers to the first use of each acronym in the document. A Database Manager allows you to save all acronyms and abbreviations used. A sharing feature enables a workgroup to use acronyms and abbreviations from the same knowledge base.