Writing & Grammar: Acronyms--Are they Both Efficient and Clear?

by Jennie Ruby

I have been told, and have taught, that you define an acronym on first use if it is used at least once more in the document. But during a recent class one of my students opened my eyes to thinking further about acronym use. Writers and editors at her agency, she said, have a policy that if an acronym is not used at least five times in the text, they do not use the acronym at all.

That policy struck me at once as being so sensible that I immediately adopted it for my own use. Why make your reader have to search back for where an acronym was defined if you have used it only twice in the entire document? Just spell it out the second time. Unless the acronym is more frequently used in the world than the spelled out words are--like CSS instead of Cascading Style Sheets--the meaning is going to be clearer if you spell out the words.

Another student sent me some text that used an acronym to refer to a group of people. The acronym referred to a medical condition, but it was along the lines of defining Microsoft Word Users as MWUs. The people were then called MWUs throughout the text. This immediately struck me as dehumanizing and disrespectful, especially since guidelines about talking about people with disabilities recommend always using the word people or person, as in people with asthma instead of asthmatics, to avoid characterizing people as totally defined by their disease. It seems even worse to define people as acronyms.

Good writing is both efficient and clear. Use of acronyms may seem very efficient, but that may be at the cost of clarity. Spelling out more words and phrases instead of using acronyms may make the document longer, but it may actually increase efficiency if it means the reader does not have to stop and go back to reread what an acronym stood for.

At their worst acronyms can make a document seem overly technical, or even exclusionary, as readers who are not very familiar with the acronyms struggle to derive meaning from terse groups of letters. 

So for now, I am going with the "used at least five times" rule in my work. Let me know what you think. Does your office have a policy like this? Do you use a lot of acronyms? Do you avoid them? I would love to hear from you.

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My next live, online grammar class is a one-day review, May 10. Bring your actual problem sentences, hyphenation questions, and other grammar conundrums and have them answered once and for all. Sign up now to allow time for your copy of Abrams' Guide to Grammar to arrive before the class.

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About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

Comments

[Francesblo]

Yes, acronyms are exclusionary. I try to define an acronym the first time I use it in a piece. That's because I remember how many people ask me, "What's Twitter again?" Gotta assume fewer people know what you're talking about than you think.

Thanks for the useful article.

[Larry Alexander]

Just for clarity, the examples you refer to in your blog are actually initialisms or alphabetisms. A true acronym uses the first letters or parts of words, but become pronounceable words themselves. Examples of acronyms are SCUBA, RADAR, UNESCO, SNAFU, etc.

CSS, MWUs, DVD, USA are examples of initialisms.

I must say that I do adhere to a similar rule for initialisms. My "Magic Number" is usually three; the intialism must be used at least three times before I define it and use it. Although rules were made to be broken. It all depends how familiar I feel the term is to my intended audience.

Larry

[Jennie Ruby]

Thanks for your comments. @Larry: On the issue of whether the distinction between initialisms or acronyms matters, I have a question for you. As far as I can determine, the only time the distinction matters is when deciding whether to precede one of these abbreviations with the article a or an. Are there other times that you are aware of when the distinction matters in a practical way? When the distinction does not matter, I admit, I have joined the ranks of those who don't bother to make the distinction. So many people are in those ranks, that Merriam Webster lists acronym as a synonym for initialism.

[Linda Aragoni]

The 5-time policy makes a lot of sense to me. In newspaper work I used the write-in-full-first-time bit. That's OK in a short piece, but not so good in a longer one where looking back can be a real nuisance.

[Larry Alexander]

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples where the difference between an acronym and an abbreviation (initialism) would make a difference.

You do, however, bring up one of the most interesting and sometimes confusing aspect regarding abbreviations which is the use of the correct article. It appears that most authorities use pronunciation as the determination of the correct article, e.g. an FBI agent. Although sometimes this can be problematic as in a URL, as some readers will say "earl" while others will spell out U-R-L.

The other interesting abbreviation related dilemma is the use of periods. For acronyms, it seems that the use of periods (SCUBA vs. S.C.U.B.A.) has fallen out of favor. Then there are the weird cases where USA is written without periods, but U.S. usually has the periods.

In any case, as I reiterate from my last post, rules were made to be broken.

[Ben Griffin]

Acronyms and abbreviations tend to be an in-group sort of communication. They are used to save time for a small number of people talking about the same subject, very often at work. Being like buzzwords, people tend to tune them out until they need them.
Although some like ATM and PIN have become ubiquitous. Or SWAT, which does seem to accurately describe what that special police unit does.

There are some backronyms like LOL, that we only write, and don't usually use in conversation. It's not likely we will say, "That has me LOL." If we feel something is funny, we laugh. Without the technology of computers and cell phones, we couldn't text much and these shortened terms wouldn't be in use.

Due to technology, and being spoken in more and more countries, shortened forms of words are a sign the English language is growing. Much of this growth has been deregulated in the past few decades as more and more avenues of communication are being developed for people.

[Jim Losey]

What is the rule for introducing an acronym that first time? In particular, must quotes AND parentheses both be used?

Examples:
There will be a high-level meeting of representatives of the North Atantic Treaty Organization ("NATO") this week.
OR
There will be a high-level meeting of representatives of the North Atantic Treaty Organization (NATO) this week.

[Jim Losey]

Sorry for the typo: should be "Atlantic"