Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations: Difference between revisions

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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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This Wikipedia Manual of Style is to provide guidelines for the use of abbreviations, including acronyms, contractions, initialisms and shortenings, in the English Wikipedia and Simple English Wikipedia. Adherence to the following guidelines is recommended because maintaining consistency will allow Wikipedia to be read, written, edited, navigated and used more easily by readers and editors alike. The style should always be consistent within a page. If a guideline conflicts with the proper usage of a proper name, ignore it. Written quotes should always be written exactly as the original source, unless the quote is a translation.

Always consider whether an abbreviation may be better simply written out in full, thus avoiding potential confusion for those not familiar with it – Wikipedia does not have the same space constraints as paper.

Full stops in abbreviations

Modern usage is to use a full stop after a shortening, but no full stops with an acronym, contraction or initialism. In American English, full stops may be used with initialisms and one-word contractions, but acronyms should never contain full stops. Whatever style is used, it should be consistent throughout an article.

Acronyms and initialism

Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviation formed from the initial letters of words in a phrase; the difference being acronyms are pronounced as the word is spelled, whereas in initialisms, each letter is pronounced individually. Some acronyms are written with all capital letters, some with a mixture of capitals and lower case letters and some are written as common nouns. All initialisms are written in capitals. Plural acronyms and initialisms are written with a lowercase "s" afterwards, without an apostrophe unless full stops are used between letters. Unless it is on the tables below, an acronym or initialism should be written out in full the first time it is used, with the abbreviation in brackets afterwards (e.g. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)). In tables, infoboxes and navboxes, acronyms and initialisms do not need to be written out in full.

Acronyms that can be used without spelling out in full first

Acronyms on this table do not need to written out in full the first time they are used in an article, except in their own articles.

Acronym	Phrase
AIDS	acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
laser	light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO	North Atlantic Treaty Organization
quango	quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization
radar	radio detection and ranging
scuba	self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
sonar	sound navigation and ranging
UNESCO	United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNICEF	United Nations Children's Fund

Initialisms that can be used without spelling out in full first

Initialism	Phrase
AD	Anno Domini
AKA	also known as
BBC	British Broadcasting Service
BC	Before Christ
CD	Compact Disc	-	EU	European Union
HMS	Her (or His) Majesty's Ship
N/A^[1]	not applicable
PC	personal computer
UAE	United Arab Emirates
UK	United Kingdom
UN	United Nations
US^[2]	United States
USB	Universal Serial Bus
USSR	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Acronyms and initialisms in article titles

Acronyms should be used in page naming if the subject is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (e.g. NASA and radar). In order to determine the prominence of the abbreviation over the full name, consider checking how the subject is referred to in popular media such as newspapers, magazines, and other publications.

Many acronyms are used for several things; naming an article with the full name helps to avoid clashes. A useful test to determine what an acronym usually refers to can be done by checking abbreviations.com, and finding the relative usage for the acronym. If it is found that an acronym is chiefly used to refer to a particular subject, the article on that subject can be expressed as the acronym. A disambiguation page can then be created for the other subjects.

Whether the acronym or the spelled-out phrase is preferable in many particular cases is debatable, but this can work itself out with the #REDIRECT [[new page name]] command. For instance, DMCA and Digital Millennium Copyright Act have oscillated as to which is primary and which page redirects. Other less controversial pairs are MPAA versus Motion Picture Association of America and IMDb versus Internet Movie Database.

However, in many cases no decision is necessary because a given acronym has several expansions, none of which is the most prominent. Under such circumstances the articles should be at the spelled-out phrases and the acronym should be a disambiguation article providing descriptive links to all of them. See, for example, AJAR, which disambiguates between Australian Journal of Agricultural Research and African Journal of AIDS Research. If the acronym and the full name are both in common use, both pages should certainly be created, and one should redirect to the other (or be a disambiguation listing).

Acronyms and initialisms as disambiguators

To make link text follow the MoS, please use standard abbreviations as disambiguators, when necessary. For example, Great Northern Railway (U.S.) and Labour Party (UK). Abbreviations are preferred over "United States" and "United Kingdom", for brevity.
To help navigation, please create redirects that contain (US) and (U.S.). For example, Great Northern Railway (US) should redirect to Great Northern Railway (U.S.).

Acronyms and initialisms in category names

For the use of acronyms in names of categories, see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Archive 7#Abbreviations: to expand or not to expand?.

Abbreviations not included in this guideline

Abbreviations in names of persons, see:
- Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Middle names - abbreviations of names
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Post-nominal initials
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships), for example: RMS Queen Elizabeth 2; USS Monitor;...
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft), for example: Douglas DC-3; Nakajima B5N;...

Widely used abbreviations in Wikipedia

In Wikipedia, abbreviations for common terms are often contained in parentheses within the head paragraph. Wikipedia has found it both practical and efficient to use the following abbreviations, although some can often be replaced by unabbreviated equivalents ("that is" for i.e., "namely" for viz., and so on).

Word(s)	Abbreviation
General abbreviations
abbreviation	abbr.
Absent Without Leave	AWL
Absence Without Official Leave	AWOL
amplitude modulation	AM
approximately	approx.
Brothers	Bros. (should only be used in the names of companies)
circa ("around", "about", "approximately")	c. (do not use ca.)
Company	Co. (commercial) or Coy. (military)
confer ("compare", "consult")	cf.
department	dept. or dept
district	dist.
division	div.
edition/editor (editions/editors)	ed. (eds.)
et alii ("and others")	et al.
et cetera ("and so forth")	etc. (do not use &c.)
exempli gratia ("for example")	e.g.
floruit ("flourished")	fl. (link first use in an article) (do not use flor. or flr.)
frequency modulation	FM
gross domestic product	GDP
gross national product	GNP
id est ("that is", "in other words")	i.e.
manufacturer/manufactory (manufacturing)	mfr. (mfg.)
not applicable	N/A (do not use n/a, NA or N.A.)
publisher (published)	pub. (pubd.)
revised	rev.
United States Ship	USS
versus ("against", "in contrast to")	vs or vs.; v. or v (legal)
videlicet ("that is to say", "namely")	viz. (link first use in an article)
volume	vol.
Time
ante meridiem ("before noon")	am or a.m.
Before the Common Era	BCE
Common Era	CE
Greenwich Mean Time	GMT
Coordinated Universal Time	UTC
post meridiem ("after noon")	pm or p.m.
Places
Avenue	Ave. or Ave
Boulevard	Blvd or Blvd.
Crescent	Cr. or Cr
Close	Cl. or Cl
Highway	Hwy or Hwy.
Latitude	lat.
Longitude	long.
Motorway	Mwy
Mountain/Mount	Mt or Mt.
Road	Rd or Rd.
Street	St. or St
Organizations
Academy	Acad.
Association	Assn or Assn.
Corporation	Corp. or Corp
Incorporated	Inc. or Inc
Institute/Institution	Inst.
Limited	Ltd or Ltd.
Public limited company	PLC, plc or p.l.c.
University	Univ. or U.
Academic degrees, titles and ranks
Bachelor of Arts (Artium Baccalaureus)	BA or B.A. (or A.B.)
Bachelor of Laws (Legum Baccalaureus)	LLB or LL.B.
Bachelor of Science	BS, B.S., BSc or B.Sc.
Captain	Capt. or Capt
Colonel	Col. or Col
Commander	Cmdr., Cdr., Cdr or Comdr.
Corporal	Cpl or Cpl.
Doctor	Dr or Dr.
Doctor of Medicine (Medicinæ Doctor)	MD or M.D.
Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophiæ Doctor)	PhD or Ph.D.
General	Gen. or Gen
Honorable	Hon.
Junior	Jr or Jr.
Lieutenant	Lt or Lt.
Mister	Mr or Mr.
Mistress	Mrs or Mrs.
Monsignor	Msgr, Msgr. or Mons.
registered nurse	RN or R.N.
Reverend	Rev. or Rev
Right Honourable	Rt. Hon. or Rt Hon
Saint	St or St.
Senior	Sr or Sr.
Sergeant	Sgt or Sgt.
Staff Sergeant	SSgt or SSgt.
Technical Sergeant	TSgt or TSgt.
States and organisations
European New Car Assessment Programme	Euro NCAP (not EuroNCAP)

Special considerations

Current and former postal codes and abbreviations—such as TX for Texas, Calif. for California, Yorks for Yorkshire—should not be used to stand in for the full names in normal text.
Mt or Mt. should not be used. Mount or Mountain should be spelled out in most situations. Exceptions are made for official names and registered trademarks.
"Saint" vs "St" or "St." in placenames should depend upon the official usage.
Editors should almost invariably give the full name of something to be abbreviated the first time it is used, unless it is part of everyday speech and writing (such as "e.g.", "2 a.m." etc.). For example, "The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is heavily involved with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). WIPO's long-standing ICANN role ..."
Abbreviations should be written in the same fashion each time they are used within the same article (e.g. "US" and "U.S." should not be alternated). Any special cases should have a natural reason (perhaps a list of officers in a joint Anglo-American taskforce) that should be obvious to the reader; stating such a reason in a hidden note will help other editors to maintain it.
If a sentence ends with a dotted abbreviation, do not double the dot to signify the end of the sentence.

Notes

^ N/A is an exception to the normal format of initialisms. It should always be written N/A and never NA or N.A.
^ USA, U.S.A. and U. S. of A. should not be used.

[1] N/A is an exception to the normal format of initialisms. It should always be written N/A and never NA or N.A.

[2] USA, U.S.A. and U. S. of A. should not be used.

[1]

[2]