Acronyms

While acronyms help you write about technical subjects in a concise manner and are necessary in technical reports, they are often overused, especially in high technology fields. Two technical experts may happily chat away or send each other e-mail about a pseudorandom generator on the LSB of the CB and CR or about rerouting OAM messages using UDP/IP in a CDPD Radio. But for non-experts, this language might as well be alphabet soup. The following diagram illustrates the pattern for acronyms.


 

To avoid turning your document into gobbledygook, keep the following three strategies in mind:

  1. Introduce acronyms, providing the words they replace the first time you use them.

  2. Limit your use of acronyms, restricting the number in individual sentences.

  3. Repeat the words acronyms replace periodically and use few if any acronyms in introductions, conclusions, abstracts, and executive summaries.

If an acronym is well known by your readers (e.g., IBM, FBI), then it can be used without concern. Also, the greater the technical expertise of your readers, the higher their tolerance for acronyms.


Some Pointers
  1. Introduce acronyms, providing the words they replace the first time you use them.

  2. Do not define common acronyms such as IBM.

  3. Limit your use of acronyms, restricting the number in individual sentences (2 or 3 maximum).

  4. Repeat the words acronyms replace periodically and use few, if any, acronyms in introductions, conclusions, abstracts, and executive summaries.

  5. Provide a glossary if your report has many acronyms.

Start Excerise

Ensure that you provide the words an acronym replaces the first time you use it. While this point may seem too obvious to need stating, we often find acronyms used several times before they are explained, as the following example from the first page of a letter report demonstrates:

Hint
1. Original:

This letter provides a summary of the results of dispersion modeling of ETBM emissions from the site, and a description of the approaches taken to estimate the ETBM emissions, to conduct the dispersion modeling and to prepare the contour plots of ambient ethyl tertiary butyl methylene (ETBM) concentrations.

1. Hinted:

This letter provides a summary of the results of dispersion modeling of ETBM emissions from the site, and a description of the approaches taken to estimate the ETBM emissions, to conduct the dispersion modeling and to prepare the contour plots of ambient ethyl tertiary butyl methylene (ETBM) concentrations.

1. Revised:
Explanation

In many cases, as in the original version, writers revise their work but fail to notice that the explanation of the acronym is no longer connected with the first use. Note that the second revision also improves the clarity and conciseness of the passage by using more descriptive verbs (summarizes instead of provides a summary of and describes instead of a description of).


To avoid frustrating your readers in this way, use the full term of the acronym when beginning a new chapter or major section or when the term has not been used for several pages. Also use the full term for acronyms that are used infrequently.