Acronyms

Section 9.4

Acronyms

Unless you are following a style guide that specifies otherwise, observe the following conventions.

Use acronyms to shorten phrases in order to save space or to avoid awkward repetition of phrases. Acronyms are abbreviations of the things they represent and are formed by combining the first, and sometimes other, letters of the principal words.




     AIDS
     Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome



     RAM
     random-access memory



     ROM
     read-only memory



     DOS
     Disk Operating System



     FTP
     file transfer protocol



     HTML
     Hypertext Markup Language



     HIV
     Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Guidelines for Using Acronyms

Capitalize acronyms, and do not use periods. When acronyms become integrated into the language as common nouns (for example, laser, radar, or scuba), they are no longer capitalized.

When using an acronym the first time, spell the phrase out and follow it with the acronym in parentheses. Then you may use the acronym by itself.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was never
intended to be a common programming language.  The original
assumption was that most word processing applications would
automatically generate HTML code.

This convention is necessary to avoid ambiguity. NMR, for example, may refer to nuclear magnetic resonance or to the National Maritime Repository.

If your prose is laden with acronyms, provide a list of terms in the front matter of your document as a guide to the reader.

To form plurals of acronyms, add a lowercase s without an apostrophe:

The number of MDs in the region has declined.

## Acronyms ##

AIDS	Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
RAM	random-access memory
ROM	read-only memory
DOS	Disk Operating System
FTP	file transfer protocol
HTML	Hypertext Markup Language
HIV	Human Immunodeficiency Virus