What is: Common Acronyms, Abbreviations, Contractions, Initialisms
Acronyms and abbreviations are commonly used in Metro North Health communications. They save time, space and repetition but can be overused and confusing to people who aren’t familiar with them. As a manager, you need to know what common acronyms and abbreviations mean and how to use them appropriately.
Contents
Definitions
Abbreviations
A shortened form of a word, with some other letters, but not the last letter e.g. ‘Hon’ Instead of Honourable.
Acronyms
These are formed using the first letters of a longer set of words, and occasionally other letters. They’re pronounced as a word e.g. ‘TAFE’ instead of Technical and Further Education and ‘Anzac’ instead of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
Contractions
These take the first and last letters of a word and sometimes other letters in between e.g. ‘dept’ instead of department.
Initialisms
An abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately e.g. ‘NSW’ instead of New South Wales and ‘USA’ instead of United States of America.
Why use these?
The advantages of acronyms, abbreviations, contractions and initialisms are that they:
- create a friendly and informal tone in publications
- can make a document easier to read
- save considerable time and space, especially when you need to fit information onto one page
- save you from having to continually repeat the longer version of a word, phrase, title or name in a document.
Some disadvantages of acronyms, abbreviations, contractions and initialisms are that they can:
- confuse unfamiliar readers
- make information harder for readers to understand
- be overused in documents.
What’s my role?
Make sure you use abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and initialisms correctly and appropriately. Don’t overuse them.
What do I need to do?
- When you first use a word, spell it out in full with the abbreviation in brackets after e.g. Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH).
- Place a full stop after abbreviations. For example:
- etc. = is correct
- etc = incorrect
- No full stop is required after a contraction. For example:
- Dr = correct
- Dr. = incorrect.
- Only reduce words to an abbreviation, acronym, contraction or initialism if necessary. Generally, this is if the word is used at least three times in a document after first being mentioned.
- Don’t create an acronym or initialism without first checking if one already exists.
