Abbreviation Full Form

What is the full form of Abbreviation?

An abbreviation is a word that means “a short form of a word or a phrase”. Grammatically the word “Abbreviation” is a noun. For example, “sec” is the abbreviation for measuring time “seconds”. The use of abbreviations came into existence in the 15th century. They are widely used to avoid the repetition of long words and phrases. Abbreviations are used in places like Measurements, Directions, Business terms, Titles, Postal terms, Time, Names of organizations, Government bodies, States and Cities, etc. It is easy to use them and they make sense when used with the other words in a text or phrase. So, they have become part of social media text messaging, email texting, etc.

This Story also Contains

1. Meaning Of Abbreviation And Its Synonyms
2. Abbreviations With Period And With No Period
3. Types Of Abbreviations And Their Rules In Writing
4. How To Write Abbreviations?
5. Commonly Used Abbreviations
6. Advantages Of Abbreviations

Meaning Of Abbreviation And Its Synonyms

• The word Abbreviation is a noun and its meaning is “Shorten or contraction”.

• An abbreviation is a word that is used in place of long words or phrases in a sentence. This is because, writing a long word repeatedly takes more time, space, and effort for a writer.

• To avoid such repeated words, Abbreviations are used.

• The synonyms of the word Abbreviations are Shorten, Contraction, Initialism, Acronym, and backronym.

Abbreviations With Period And With No Period

Abbreviations are used in the English language for reducing the complexity of writing repeated long words or phrases and making the writing to be as simple as possible to read and understand for anyone. For abbreviations, there are some rules. They are period and no period. Here, a period is nothing but a “dot” or “Full stop”.

• In American English, a period is used to end any abbreviation that stands for a single word. For example, the abbreviation for the word “Government” in American English is written as “Govt.”

• In British English, a period is a choice to use and it is typically avoided in certain cases. For example, “Govt” is abbreviated for the word “Government”.

Types Of Abbreviations And Their Rules In Writing

There are four types of abbreviations in English. They are Initialisms, Acronyms, Shortenings, and Contractions. All these are having their own rules in both British English and American English.

Initialisms:

• Abbreviations that are pronounced letter by letter are referred to under Initialisms.

• Example: CEO – Chief Executive Officer.

• These types of abbreviations are formed from the first letters of a group of words.

• The main rule for writing these abbreviations is “if the first letters of the group of words (especially official organizations) are Capital letters, then the abbreviation is also written in Capital letters only.

• For other abbreviations, it's the choice of writing them in capitals or small letters. For example, for “frequently asked questions”, we can write “faq” or “FAQ”

Acronyms:

• Abbreviations that are pronounced as single words are referred to under Acronyms.

• Example: NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

• These types of abbreviations are also formed from the first letters of a group of words. But these are spelled as single words.

• The rules are as similar to the Initialisms.

Shortenings:

• These abbreviations are of two kinds: real words and not real words.

• Real words are those which are written and read in short form only. These words end with no period.

• Example: “app” – for application in software

• Not real words are those which are written in short form but read by their full version. These words end with a period.

• Example: “Mon.” – for Monday

Contractions:

• These abbreviations are of two kinds depending on the missing letters from the original words or phrases.

• In these types, the abbreviations are formed by the first and last letters of a word.

• Example: Dr – Doctor; govt. – government.

• Some of these abbreviations are formed by “apostrophe”.

• Example: I’ve – I have; She’s – She is; They’d – They would.

How To Write Abbreviations?

• In writing abbreviations for single long words, the initial letters of the word or the initial and last letters of the word are used.

• Example: Mister – Mr.

• Writing abbreviations for phrases, the first letters or initial portion of each word without periods are used.

• Example: Crime Investigation Department – CID

• Some abbreviations are mostly used in that they become words on their own, and some people may be unaware that they are written in short form.

Examples: radar – (radio detecting and ranging); and Laser – (Lightwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).

Commonly Used Abbreviations

Some of the commonly used abbreviations are:

Abbreviations for single words:

• mph – miles per hour

• cm – centimeter

• km - kilometer

• sq. – square

• mg – milligram

• ml – milliliter

• kg – kilogram

• Mt. – Mountain

• Prof. – Professor

• St. – Saint

• AM – Ante Meridiem (Time)

• PM – Post Meridiem (Time)

• Ltd. – Limited

Abbreviations (Acronyms) for Phrases or groups of words:

• NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration

• UNO – United Nations Organisations

• FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation

• DRDO – Defence Research and Development Organisation

• ROM – Read Only Memory

• ATM – Automated Teller Machine

Internet abbreviations:

• OMG – oh my god

• BTW – By the way

• LOL – Laughing out loud

• BFF – best friends forever

Advantages Of Abbreviations

• A writer’s time is saved and space is also saved while writing an essay or article or story or anything.

• Increases the speed of writing of a writer.

• Helps conventional usages of words in scripts.

• Makes the scripts easy to read and understand.