20 Examples of Abbreviations

Abbreviations allow for shorter sentences in written language and tend to avoid repetition of terms. For example: pp . (abbreviation for “page”)It is one of the procedures that the language has to shorten expressions, the others are the use of symbols, acronyms and initials .

20 Examples of Abbreviations

While abbreviations and symbols reduce the space occupied by certain words by shortening them or representing them in a conventional way, respectively, acronyms and initialisms abbreviate phrases , that is, expressions made up of more than one word.

Procedures for abbreviating

Abbreviations can be recognized by the presence of a period after the last letter (known as the abbreviated period). There are three basic procedures for forming them:

• Apocope. This is the most common method of constructing abbreviations, which involves the removal of the final part of the word. For example:(abbreviation for “chapter”)
• By omitting some intermediate letters. For example:Inc.(abbreviation for “company”)
• Contraction. Only a few letters conventionally established as representing that word are written. For example: As.(abbreviation for “Buenos Aires”)

Characteristics of abbreviations

• At least two letters must be removed from the abbreviated word to “save” at least two characters, since the space occupied by the period is always added.
• In a few cases, abbreviations include characters that are not in the abbreviated word.
• Many words have more than one way to be abbreviated.
• Each abbreviated element that represents a complete element must have its period.
• Since the period always serves as a closing point for a phrase or sentence, there should never be two periods one after the other.
• If the abbreviation is composed of several elements, the spaces between the original expression must be respected.
• Accentsare always kept in abbreviations.
• The plural of abbreviations is constructed in the vast majority of cases by adding an “s” or “es” at the end.
• Initial doubling is also a relatively common method of abbreviating pluralized fixed designations, typically the name of a political or administrative division, such as US (for United States) or HR (for Human Resources). These were previously considered acronyms.
• Some abbreviations include superscript letters and others include slashes, especially in administrative and legal fields.
• Abbreviations for personal titles, academic or professional titles, religious dignities, or military ranks are always written with an initial capital letter.

Examples of abbreviations

Some examples of abbreviations are given below, along with the complete word or expression.