Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:31, 28 December 2012

This guideline is a part of the English Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts MOS:ABBR WP:ABBR WP:MOSABBR

This guideline covers the use of abbreviations, including acronyms, contractions and shortenings, in the English Misplaced Pages. Maintaining a consistent abbreviation style will allow Misplaced Pages to be read, written, edited, navigated and used more easily by readers and editors alike. The style should always be consistent within a page. If a guideline conflicts with the correct usage of a proper name, ignore it. The abbreviation style used in quotations from written sources should always be written exactly as in the original source, unless it is a Misplaced Pages-made translation.

Always consider whether it is better to simply write a word or phrase out in full, thus avoiding potential confusion for those not familiar with its abbreviation. Remember that Misplaced Pages does not have the same space constraints as paper.

Full stops

Modern style is to use a full stop (period) after a shortening (although there are many exceptions) but no full stops with an acronym or contraction. In the case of an acronym containing full stops between letters, it should also have a full stop after the final letter. If an abbreviation ending in a full stop ends a sentence, do not use an extra full stop (e.g. New York is in the U.S., not New York is in the U.S..).

Acronyms

• MOS:ACRO
• WP:ACRO

Acronyms are abbreviations formed, usually, from the initial letters of words in a phrase.

• Capitalisation: Some acronyms are written with all capital letters, some with a mixture of capitals and lower-case letters and some are written as common nouns (e.g. laser). Acronyms whose letters are pronounced individually (which is what some call "initialisms", for example FBI, EU) are written in capitals.
• Spacing: The letters of acronyms should not be spaced.
• Plurals: Plural acronyms are written with a lower-case s after the abbreviation, without an apostrophe, unless full stops are used between the letters (e.g. ABCs or A.B.C.'s).

Unless specified in the "Exceptions" section below, an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, e.g. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Common exceptions to this rule are post-nominal initials because writing them out in full would cause clutter. To save space, in "small spaces" (infoboxes, navboxes and tables), acronyms do not need to be written out in full. When not written out in full on the first use on a page, an acronym should be linked. An unambiguous acronym can be linked as is but or ambiguous acronym should be linked to its expansion.

Exceptions

The following section's wording or inclusion in this policy or guideline is disputed or under discussion. Please see the relevant talk page discussion for further information.

Ship names

Abbreviations in the names of ships (e.g. HMS and USS) should not be written out in full.

Time zones

Abbreviations for time zones (e.g. GMT and UTC) should not be written out in full in times.

Acronyms in this table do not need to be written out in full upon first use, except in their own articles or where not doing so would cause ambiguity. They should only be linked to their expansion if their article is named that way.

Miscellanea

Acronyms in page titles

• WP:ACRONYMTITLE

An acronym or initialism should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, USB). In order to determine the prominence of the abbreviation over the full name, consider checking how the subject is referred to in popular media such as newspapers, magazines, and other publications.

Many acronyms are used for several things; naming a page with the full name helps to avoid clashes. A useful test to determine what an abbreviation usually refers to can be done by checking abbreviations.com and finding the relative usage. If it is found that an acronym is chiefly used to refer to a particular subject, the article on that subject can be expressed as the acronym and a disambiguation page can be used for the other subjects.

Whether the acronym or the spelled-out phrase is preferable in many particular cases is debatable. For instance, "DMCA" and "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" have oscillated as to which is primary and which page redirects. Other less controversial pairs are "MPAA" versus "Motion Picture Association of America" and "IMDb" versus "Internet Movie Database".

In many cases, no decision is necessary because a given acronym has several expansions, none of which is the most prominent. Under such circumstances, an article should be named with the spelled-out phrase and the acronym should be a disambiguation page providing descriptive links to all of them. See, for example, "AJAR", which disambiguates between "African Journal of AIDS Research" and "Australian Journal of Agricultural Research". If the acronym and the full name are both in common use, both pages should exist, with one redirecting to the other (or as a disambiguation page).

Acronyms as disambiguators

To save space, acronyms should be used as disambiguators, when necessary. For example, "Great Northern Railway (U.S.)" and "Labour Party (UK)". The abbreviations are preferred over United States and United Kingdom, for brevity.

To help navigation, please create redirects that contain (US) and (U.S.). For example, "Great Northern Railway (US)" should redirect to "Great Northern Railway (U.S.)" (or the other way around).

Acronyms in category names

Contractions

A contraction is an abbreviation of one or more words that has some or all of the middle letters removed but retains the first and final letters (e.g. Mr and aren't). Missing letters are replaced by an apostrophe in multiple-word contractions. Multiple-word contractions should not be used but single-word contractions are acceptable as long as they are not ambiguous. Uncommon contractions should be linked on the first use on a page.

Prefix titles such as Mr and Dr should not be used. Prefixes of royalty and nobility should be used, however (in accordance with a relevant style guide), but should not be abbreviated. (See Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (people)#Titles and styles and Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility).)

Initials

Template:Main section

Only use initials in a personal name if the name is commonly written that way. An initial should be followed by a full stop and a non-breaking space ( ).

Shortenings

A shortening is an abbreviation of a word for which at least the last letter has been removed (e.g. etc. and rhino). Some shortenings also contain letters that are not present in their expansion (e.g. bike). Whether or not to follow a shortening with a full stop often comes down to individual cases but, as a general rule, use a full stop after a shortening that only exists in writing (e.g. etc.) but not for a shortening that is used in speech (e.g. rhino). Common sense should be applied to judge whether a shortening is acceptable in prose or not – words such as rhino are fine and etc. should be used over et cetera but informal terms, such as wanna, are not used in Misplaced Pages articles. Uncommon shortenings should be linked on the first use on a page.

Song-writing credits

Outside of prose, trad. and arr. may be used in song-writing credits to save space. On first usage, use {{trad.}} and {{arr.}}.

Miscellaneous shortenings

Symbols

Unit symbols

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Miscellaneous symbols

• Ampersands (&) should only be used in small spaces, but, preferably, should be avoided.
• The at sign (@) should not be used in the place of at in normal text.

Latin abbreviations

In normal usage, abbreviations of Latin words and phrases should be italicised, except AD, c., e.g., etc. and i.e., which have become ordinary parts of the English language. The expansions of Latin abbreviations should still be italicised, as with most foreign words and phrases.

Do not use &c. in the place of etc.

Widely used abbreviations in Misplaced Pages

In Misplaced Pages, abbreviations for common terms are often contained in parentheses within the head paragraph. Misplaced Pages has found it both practical and efficient to use the following abbreviations, although some can often be replaced by unabbreviated equivalents (that is for i.e., namely for viz., and so on). Versions of non-acronym abbreviations that do not end in stops (periods) are more common in British than North American English, and are generally abbreviations that compress a word while retaining its first and last letters, rather than truncating. That said, US military ranks are often given without this punctuation. The Manual of Style on abbreviations, above, eschews the use of periods with acronyms and initialisms (M.D., Ph.D.).

Special considerations

• Postal codes and abbreviations of place names (e.g. Calif. (California), TX (Texas), Yorks (Yorkshire)) should not be used to stand in for the full names in normal text.
• "Saint" vs "St" or "St." in placenames should depend upon the official usage.
• Abbreviations should be written in the same fashion each time they are used within the same page (e.g. "US" and "U.S." should not be alternated). Any special cases should have a natural reason (perhaps a list of officers in a joint Anglo-American taskforce) that should be obvious to the reader; stating such a reason in a hidden note will help other editors to maintain it.

See also

• American and British English differences#Punctuation
• Misplaced Pages:Edit summary legend
• Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (aircraft)
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (ships)

• Misplaced Pages Manual of Style (formatting)