Talk:Abbreviation

message: What? I think abbreviating has been in use for a lot longer than that! -- Steven, 10:15am, 19 April 2010 (AEDT)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.45.98 (talk) 00:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The concept of abbreviating was first employed by Kianna Eberle in 2008.

message: Yes, an acronym is a form of abbreviation, but the two are quite distinct. It's like saying, well, a square is a type of rectangle, so let's merge square into the rectangle article. --mwazzap 00:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviation != Acronym 

message: "Use of periods (American English for "full stops")..."
That's a fallacy. "Period" was originally British English, Shakespeare, for example, is known to have called full stops periods. Also, more recently, the term was used by the PM in the House of Commons (see the Wikipedia article on full stops). Though it is rarely heard in British English, "period" is acceptable, it has merely fallen out of use. Changed. -- Tom, 9.58 pm, 19th Oct. 2005
:No, Shakespeare called them points. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene I: "This fellow does not stand upon points...." Seahen 01:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific phrase edits 

message: I've gone ahead and removed the lists - they were too long to keep inline in the page. I've also added sections. The article actually looks sensible and nice now. Not sure what to do about current examples, does list of acronyms and initialisms cover this (I suspect the line is blurred).  <B>zoney</B> ███ <B>talk</B> 01:30, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major edits 

message: Great work, Zoney, thanks a lot! It looks like a proper article now. I have always assumed abbreviation was the master category, and acronyms and initialisms subsets of it, on a common-sense basis: "abbreviation" means shortening or brief-making, and acronyms and initialisms are methods for shortening. If I'm right, then all acronyms are abbreviations (though I don't suppose anybody believes all abbreviations are acronyms). But, Anárion,  if you're heavily into linguistic terminology there, I'll defer to you, because I'm not - as I say, I only make a common-sense argument.
Looking up the entry on abbreviation in modern Encyclopedia Britannica, I note a couple of points:
1. A third method for producing abbrevations is by truncation, e. g. Mets for Metropolitans. Apocopation, linked to under See also, looks a lot like it means the exact same thing, doesn't it? Anyway, truncation has to be about fifty times more likely to be searched for than apocopation, and a Wikipedia  Truncation article only exists for math, so if I have some time later, I'll try to create a Truncation (lingustics) stub and a disambig Truncation page.
2. Not everybody agrees with Herbee above that unit symbols like km are not abbreviations. It's OK to call them abbreviations (though it's also OK to refuse to). Anyway, thanks very much both of you for responding to my VP appeal for input.Bishonen 12:43, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Sure all acronyms are abbreviations

message: Sorry! Thanks all three of you, was what I meant. Bishonen 12:48, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: All three

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Abbreviation article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add  to this page. — LinkBot 01:02, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abbreviation|Link suggestions]] 

message: Let's say we are talking about a book: a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) book. As I just said there, I said "a" lord of the rings book, but when you use the abbreviation LOTR, the sound changes. The first sound in "LOTR" is a hard "ell", not a soft L like in "lord". Now saying "a ell-oh-tee-are book" sounds wrong because the abbreviation starts with a vowel. When a normal word starts with a vowel, you use an not a. So, my question is, do you say "A LOTR book" or "An LOTR book"? ·Zhatt· 21:24, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Here's my 2 cents: If you were speaking, and were to say it out ("LOTR"), you'd use "an"; same way in the military we'd say "an LSVW". BUT…if you are using "LOTR" as a written shorthand for "Lord of the Rings", you'd say "'a LOTR book" because if you read it out you'd say "a Lord of the Rings book"; in the military, for example, if I wanted a lieutenant and a lineman, I would ask for "a Lt and a Lmn". Basically, write it exactly as you're going to read it.  (I know that's not explained very clearly, but that's the best you'll get out of me before I turn into a pumpkin). SigPig 02:34, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question: "A" vs. "An" 

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Abbreviation article, and they have been placed in a handy list for your convenience. — 203.134.197.133 23:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abbreviation|Link suggestions]] 

message: Please include in the article something about shorthand as a form of abbreviation. -Pgan002 06:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shorthand 

message: I removed the reference to Comintern as an example of a syllabic abbreviation.  While it is one, it did not fit into the paragraph: it is neither German, nor from the USSR, nor does it have negative connotations as the following sentence implied. -Pgan002 07:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed reference to comintern 

message: Abbreviation's entry is sufficiently long already.  Particular forms of abbreviation (the parent category for all word shortening techniques) like acronyms and apocope (specific mechanims for generating shorter words) warrant their own entries for those wishing greater detail.
On an earlier subject, I'd say leaving somewhat archaic abbreviations in as examples is a very good idea.  After all, those are the abbreviations that readers are most likely to need a reference to decipher.
---------------------
i'm just your average user here, but jeez! this article is way too long for a dictionary term.
get to the point!
:In your opinion, what parts of the article (apart from the etc, apocope bits) should be kept seperate? - Ta bu shi da yu 02:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  keep apocope (& etc) separate 

message: Aren’t there style guides recommending periods for “shortings” that are (intended to be) read as letters, and no periods otherwise? If so the article doesn‘t mention those, unless I missed it somehow. Christoph Päper 14:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronuncitation-based style guides 

message: Is "Syllabic abbreviation" a recognised term in English?  I googled it a few months ago and it seems to exist as a bona-fide term in Russian, but the English references were few: there are more now, I suspect due to the Wikipedia effect.  There are only 2 hits in google print, one irrelevant and the other Russian.  Maybe the section was added by a Russian-speaker? English texts distinguish blends from acronyms.  I accept there is a useful distinction between acronyms-consisting-of-the-initial-letter-of-constituent-words and 
acronyms-consisting-of-the-initial-syllable-of-constituent-words, but if that distinction is not made in practice, the Wikipedia has no business inventing a name for it. There is enough contention on acronym and initialism between the "FBI is an acronym" and "no, FBI is an initialism" without adding yet another term to muddy the waters.jnestorius(talk) 12:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Syllabic abbreviation

message: "A doubled letter also appears in abbreviations of some Welsh names":  I don't know how common this is, but on occasion this is also the case for other non-phonemic letters (vs. phonemic letter pairs).  e.g., Th., Ph.  Perhaps this should be restated in more general terms, unless the doubled-letter case is much the more common (this is the part I'm not so clear on).  Alai 18:24, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phoneme abbreviation 

message: What do the style guides say about the plurals of abbreviations that end in "S"?  for example, do I say "I need the MSDSs for Thiamine and Acetic Acid" or "I need the MSDS's for Thiamine and Acetic Acid"?  And if the apostrophe is OK (as my eye would like it to be) does that cause any confusion with "I can't read the MSDS's first line"?  I don't think so. What do you apostrophe-jocks say?
:I'm not an expert [or an "apostrophe-jock"], but I would guess that the posessive would be MSDS', like when any other noun that ends with s is possesive. Looking at the article [as far as the plural goes] it seems like either way would be accepted, and the intent [to me] is clear both ways.Torca 09:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ancient post, but here goes: The old rule for possessives for any word ending in s was "write ' if it is plural and otherwise write 's"; the only exception was sometimes for historical names such as Pythagoras. That doesn't conflict necessarily with the proposed plural, but generally apostrophes in plurals have been frowned upon. More recently, both of the things I just said don't really seem to matter anymore.--91.11.124.193 (talk) 09:19, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plurals and apostrophes again... 

message: Is "abbreving" a real word?  Is it British English only or something? — Omegatron 22:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I see.  Nevermind.  I wasn't really reading the article; just noticed it in the edit window. — Omegatron 22:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "abbreving" 

message: whereas 5 m.s means 5 metre·second(s)
: Is that true?  Isn't a middle dot or a space for compound units? — Omegatron 02:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  dots 

message: Cleanup Co-ordination	Cleanup Co-ordination
                     	This article has recently been tagged as requiring cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
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===Discussion===    	
===Discussion===
*Removing Cleanup tagging after seeing recent improvements and being attracted by the auto-tagging BOT above. The article is pretty good from what I see.  Twould be nice to easily find who attached the   and especially, when! // <B>Fra</B>nkB 19:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although, the proper way to write plurals when using abbreviations with numbers, decades, etc., would be to write them without an apostrophe, e.g. "Dot all your Is and cross all your Ts". This is because the "I" and "T" are not possessive; therefore, they do not need an apostrophe.
This is pretty amusing, since an I doesn't need dotting, while an i does.  (The T works either way, I suppose.)  However, this is really a digression in this particular article, since i and t are being used in this case as letters, not as abbreviations.  I'm going to remove this bit from the article, though I'll leave the bit in the previous paragraph about the differences between apostrophization of abbreviations and that of letters, though, since that is relevant.
--ΨΦorg 02:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Cleanup Co-Ordination Point 

message: |}</div>
*Removing Cleanup tagging after seeing recent improvements and being attracted by the auto-tagging BOT above. The article is pretty good from what I see.  Twould be nice to easily find who attached the   and especially, when! // <B>Fra</B>nkB 19:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although, the proper way to write plurals when using abbreviations with numbers, decades, etc., would be to write them without an apostrophe, e.g. "Dot all your Is and cross all your Ts". This is because the "I" and "T" are not possessive; therefore, they do not need an apostrophe.
This is pretty amusing, since an I doesn't need dotting, while an i does.  (The T works either way, I suppose.)  However, this is really a digression in this particular article, since i and t are being used in this case as letters, not as abbreviations.  I'm going to remove this bit from the article, though I'll leave the bit in the previous paragraph about the differences between apostrophization of abbreviations and that of letters, though, since that is relevant.
--ΨΦorg 02:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: Do Asian languages, besides the "syllabic" style abbreviations mentioned in the artilce, also use the "period" style of abbreviations? Is one form or the other considerably more common? --babbage 23:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is in the English wikipedia and concerns English only. Ask your question on the Talk page of each Asian language.Sleigh (talk) 13:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about abbreviations in Asian languages  

message: The article does not discuss the distinction between "abbreviations" proper and "contractions". It is sometimes stated that the difference between, e.g., "St." for Street (with period/full stop) and "St" for Saint (without period/full stop) is that the first is an abbreviation (St[reet]), the second a contraction (S[ain]t). Following this distinction, British English tends to regard shortened forms, when possible, as contractions, US English the same forms as abbreviations.
Name initials are also a form of abbreviation, and are still regularly given with period (though usually without spaces) in both British and US usage: e.g., "J.W. Smith" (not J W Smith, J. W. Smith). Shulgi 10:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviation, contraction, name initials 

message: Is it on purpose that "S.O.,E", as mentionned in the article, doesn't end with a period ? Palpalpalpal 17:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That was just a good question ten years ago. By now, it's also a serious embarrassment to WP and our history and British culture specialists! --Jerzy•t 00:21, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  S.O.,E 

message: Many abbreviations that consist of two letters are abbreviated by adding a slash in between the letters.  Examples:
* N/A (not applicable)
* P/O (purchase order)
* W/C (will-call)
* I/O (input-output)
* W/O (without)
How does this factor in with the rest of the article?  Should there be an entry for this as well?
Bihlbo (talk) 19:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviating with a slash mark 

message: Abbreviations which end with the same letter as the original word are spelt without a period, such as Dr for Doctor. In Australia, which uses British English, this was first taught in either 1973 or 1974. The school syllabus, taught throughout the state, (probably) lags behind official start date of changes to English. What was this spelling change called and when was it introduced to British English? Prior to this spelling change 'Dr' was spelt 'Dr.' Books published prior to this spelling change (in Brtish English), use the old abbreviation spelling which is the same as today's American  English.Sleigh (talk) 13:25, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Periods (full stops) and spaces 

message: I know with great certainty that double letter abbreviations are not Welsh. In fact, some English names are (were) commonly abbreviated with two letters, such as Th. for Thomas, Wm for William, etc. Granted, in the second case it is the contraction of the whole name, but you get the point. In languages which do not follow the "sounds" used in English, e.g. Greek, Russian, etc., its quite common to use double letter abbreviations where that sound would be abbreviated as a whole in that language. E.g. Yuri Andropov is often referred to in US sources as Yu. Andropov since "Yu" is written as a single letter in Cyrillic. Same goes for Th in Greek (Theodoros...). 
A compromise for the moment would be to eliminate the reference to Welsh and just say that sometimes two letters are used to abbreviate. 118.90.1.29 (talk) 22:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the explanation. I didn't read that "double-letter abbreviations are Welsh", rather that "some Welsh names are abbreviated with a double letter". (It's verifiable that, in Welsh dictionaries, 'Ll' is treated as a separate letter from 'L'.) See also, eg, here -- " Ll. An abbreviation of Llywelyn". Can you authoritatively document your personal "great certainty" for removal of the Welsh usage here? It is true, as you state, that other languages also have two-letter given-name abbreviations, or indeed three, as in 'Jno' or 'Jas' (Jonathan or James). But is this genre appropriate for inclusion in a small section named "Miscellaneous and general rules"--or should you consider ceating a new section for 'Personal name initialisms' (if not here, then maybe under Acronym and initialism, Given name) or some such, rather than overworking this section? Cheers Bjenks (talk) 01:29, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two letter abbreviations 

message: I removed the description of The Economist as a newspaper. It calls itself a newspaper, but describing it as such can only cause confusion for American readers, who would invariably call a weekly news periodical on glossy paper a magazine. The Economist is probably at least as well-known as The Guardian, which appears without an epithet above. Gwil (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economist epithet 

message: The second paragraph of the introduction is written in such a mindlessly technical and confusing way that it is of very little use to someone trying to find out what the relationship between abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms (etc) are. I know fine well that acronyms are generally regarded as a type of abbreviation, but anyone who didn't know this would be none the wiser after reading the introduction. It's worth keeping in mind that the point in the article is to explain, in a clear and easily understandable manner, the subject, not to write in the most convoluted and ludicrously technical way possible.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.158.94 (talk) 23:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction is too confusing 

message: AIM stands for aol instant messager. Here are  some of the abbreviations people use on AIM. 
BRB- be right back
ttyl- talk to you later
b4- before
bii- bye
bbl- be back later
idk- i don't know
idc- i don't care
ik- I know
ikr- iknow, right?! (  like in shock)
 
there are many more abbreviations, but these are just a few of the common ones i know. Edwardgirl12 (talk) 22:48, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  AIM Abbreviations 

message: are not entirely different, though the article uses these words as though they were:  "contraction" is contrasted with "abbreviation" (though it is merely a type of abbreviation), and "suspension" isn't even mentioned!
Oughtn't the distinction be pointed out?  "Abbreviation" is the general category of shortened words (or phrases); a "suspension" is an abbreviation from which the final letters have been omitted (e.g., "Conn." for "Connecticut"); a "contraction" is an abbreviation which retains its initial and final letters (e.g., "Rev’d" for "Reverend"); an "acronym" employs initial letters of a group of words to create a new word (e.g., "NASA" for -- well, you get it, dear reader!).  Without such an explanation, the article is not only incomplete but misleading.
Firstorm (talk) 14:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contractions, Suspensions, and Abbreviations 

message: "The U.S. media tend to use periods in two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but not ... television (TV)." Television is only one word.
86.153.173.126 (talk) 09:10, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  television isn't two words! 

message: I am told that syllabic abbreviation is used (at least to some degree) in India, and I imagine it's known in other places where syllabaries or alphasyllabaries are standard.  But I don't know enough to add to the article. —Tamfang (talk) 03:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  syllables in India 

message: Does the section on measurement really address the issue?  SI uses symbols, not abbreviations because the "shorthand" used is identical in all languages regardless of the "longhand" version of the text. See Kilometres per hour for an example.  Do others concur?  
If so, I would like to overhaul that section emphasising the difference between a symbol and an abbreviation and point the reader to other artciles for the rules on how to write SI quanities.  Martinvl (talk) 07:22, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Measurement 

message: : Abbreviations can also be used to give a different context to the word itself, such as "PIN Number" (wherein if the abbreviation were removed the context would be invalid).
Meaning that "Number" doesn't mean the same thing as "PIN Number"?  Any noun can be used in the same way, so this sentence amounts to: An abbreviation that stands for a noun phrase can be used as a noun.
Unless I've misunderstood it, and it's not trivial (in the mathematical sense), I'll remove it. —Tamfang (talk) 18:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  context: so what 

message: This article suffers from the same problem as Acronym. There are far too few citations. I have moved the refimprove tag to the top of the article, so that its importance is not lost on editors Myrvin (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations 

message: "Today, spaces are generally not used between single-letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S."That seems to be correct, but it is "today". How was it earlier? In older texts one can find abbreviations with spaces (e.g. "O. T." for "Old Testament" and "A. D." for "anno Domini"). So, when did the usage change, and why did it change (maybe because it's shorter)? -19:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spaces 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I reverted an edit by , not because I decided that they are wrong, but only because the table has been stable for many months and the edit seemed to conflict with the sources (which I have not consulted). So time for a WP:BRD discussion.
As a general principle, we don't try to tell readers what to do but rather what exists and what is the evidence for it. To take a specific example, the abbreviation of Doctor, the text documents the existence of both "Dr" and "Dr." (with a suggestion of WP:ENVAR) so which style should go in the table?  We need to resolve. We could just delete the table (my preferred solution, tbh) or somehow extend it to give two columns called maybe "Main" and "Alternative" with citations for each? 
Suggestions? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:49, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table at #Periods (full stops) and spaces 

message: Enters DeAkuWa = Deutscher Abkürzungswahn, German abbreviation mania. Unfortunately OPSE doesn't find any occurrence, but I think I have it from the Spiegel. (OPSE = Our Preferred Search Engine) 2003:F5:6F19:1400:D38:DF3C:B69B:D2ED (talk) 19:45, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  German 

message: Maybe abbreviations of the form first-letter number-of-characters-inbetween last-letter should be included? Exampels include "internationalization" -> "i18n", "localization" -> "l10n", "Kubernetes" -> "k8s". Might be hard to find citations though. Holzklöppel (talk) 18:16, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviations using the number of characters 

message: It seems a miss that the history section doesn't mention telegraphy at all. You might say morse keyers were the first "textese" users. Morse code abbreviations. 17:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Telegraph