When to Abbreviate, Etc.

When is it appropriate to abbreviate words? The answer to this question, as with many matters in writing, is not a simple one: It depends on type of content and the degree of the content’s formality.

In technical publications and scholarly journals, abbreviation of statistical information or references to dimensions and durations abounds. Furthermore, the American Medical Association’s manual of style dictates that periods be omitted in many abbreviations. However, in general content intended for professional publication, consider whether to abbreviate, especially in contexts in which multiple various abbreviations might be distracting.

Social titles such as Mr., Mrs., and Ms., are usually superfluous altogether but are abbreviated when they appear, except in generic usage such as “Hey, mister!” Doctor is abbreviated before a name but otherwise spelled out, as is saint. (Note, however, that cities and other geographic designations differ in using Saint or St.; consult a resource to verify the correct style for a particular location.) Military and quasi-military ranks are spelled out or abbreviated depending on context, but as with other titles, they should be spelled out in isolation (for example, “The captain returned the salute”).

Regarding i.e., that abbreviation and its close cousins e.g. and etc. are convenient, but they are no improvement on the English equivalents (“that is,” “for example,” and “and so on,” respectively). Style for scholarly journals is to use the abbreviations in parentheses and spell out the English phrases outside parentheses, but this distinction is not recommended for general-interest publications; avoid them altogether.

Names of countries and other geopolitical entities are usually spelled out as nouns but abbreviated as adjectives (“the United States,” but “the US economy”); note in the previous example that periods in such designations, as in most other capitalized abbreviations, are unnecessary. Designations of thoroughfares, like many other words, can be abbreviated in lists or in graphics where space is at a premium, but generally spell out such terms as avenue, road, and street even when they are part of an address.

Titles of senior corporate executives—CEO, COO, and CIO, for instance—are almost always abbreviated in all references, but VP (“vice president”), SVP (“senior vice president”), and the like are generally spelled out in all instances. Corporate terms such as PR (“public relations”) and HR (“human resources”) can be spelled out or abbreviated depending on context; they’re likely to be spelled out in a formal report and probably will be abbreviated in a casual reference in a mass-market book.

Academic degrees are often abbreviated after a person’s name, but it’s better to refer to someone receiving a bachelor’s or master’s degree or a doctorate rather than a BA, an MA, or a PhD. Likewise, “curriculum vita,” or the plural form “curriculum vitae,” is preferable to CV.

References to media such as CDs and DVDs are ubiquitous (or at least were before they began to give way to online access to music and films), and there’s no need to spell those initialisms out. (You’d likely have to look up that DVD originally stood for “digital video disc,” though the second word has since been supplanted by versatile. And who knows, or cares, that URL stands for “universal resource locator”? The initialism will do in all cases.) However, words for parts of a book or other printed publication should be spelled out (for example, “In my copy, chapter 6 starts on page 47”), and MS or ms, for manuscript, should be used only in informal contexts.

No. is sometimes used as an abbreviation for number in phrases such as “No. 1”; it’s a compromise between spelling the word out and using the number symbol (#).

The abbreviation for versus, vs., is acceptable in informal content, as is OK. (Okay is a common variant, but the initials are more accurate; the most likely derivation of OK is the jocular misspelling “oll korrect,” the only survivor of a short-lived flurry of such locutions coined during the nineteenth century.)

Terms of distance and duration, such as foot and hour, are generally spelled out when accompanying numerals except in technical writing, as are designations such as Celsius and Fahrenheit; the same is true of phrases such as “miles per hour” and “pounds per square inch.” However, the abbreviations am and pm, often capitalized and/or with periods, are always acceptable, though a phrase such as “one o’clock in the morning” is appropriate for a casual reference in fiction or nonfiction.

Abbreviations are much more likely to be employed in ephemeral publications such as newspapers than in more durable materials such as books, though formality varies widely in the latter format; online usage differs as well. Ultimately, the careful writer will consult a style guide appropriate to the type of print or online publication for guidance or at least will consciously consider the visual and cognitive impact of abbreviation.

 DailyWritingTips.com

Who or whom

The confusion between “who” and “whom” is one of the most common problems writers face.

“Who” is used as the subject of a verb or complement of a linking verb. It’s a nominative pronoun.

“Whom” is used as the object of the verb or the object of a preposition. It’s an objective pronoun.

Five Steps to Completing Your First Draft

Follow these stages of preparation and production to assemble a first draft of written (or spoken) content.

1. Identify Your Purpose
What is the reason for writing the content? Are you objectively presenting information? If so, is it for educational purposes, or for entertainment — or both? Are you writing to help someone make a decision, or encouraging someone to take action? Identifying your goal for the content will help you shape the piece.

2. Identify Your Readership
Who are your intended readers (and your unintended ones)? What is their level of literacy, and what is their degree of prior knowledge of the topic?

Imagining who your readers are will help you decide what voice and tone to adopt, how formal or informal your language will be — though that factor also depends on your approach (see below) — and how much detail or background information you provide.

3. Identify Your Approach

Should your content be authoritative, or is it the work of someone informally communicating with peers? Are you offering friendly advice, or is your tone cautionary? Are you selling something, or are you skeptical? Should the content be serious, or is some levity appropriate? Determining your strategy, in combination with identifying your readership, will help you decide how the piece will feel to the reader.

4. Identify Your Ideas
Brainstorm before and during the drafting process, and again when you revise. If appropriate, talk or write to intended readers about what they hope to learn from the content. Imagine that you are an expert on the topic, and pretend that you are being interviewed about it. Write down the questions and your answers to help you structure the content. Alternatively, present a mock speech or lecture on the topic and transcribe your talk.

Draft an executive summary or an abstract of the content, or think about how you would describe it to someone in a few sentences. Or draw a diagram or a map of the content.

Using one or more of these strategies will help you populate your content with the information your readers want or need.

5. Identify Your Structure
Craft a title that clearly summarizes the topic in a few words. Explain the main idea in the first paragraph. Organize the content by one of several schemes: chronology or sequence, relative importance, or differing viewpoints. Use section headings or transitional language to signal new subtopics. Integrate sidebars, graphics, and/or links as appropriate.

Incorporating these building blocks will help you produce a coherent, well-organized piece.

 From: Daily Writing Tips

General Rules About Abbreviations

This post outlines basic rules about abbreviations. There is a bewildering variety of standards, which will be explained in more detail in subsequent posts about specific categories of abbreviation, but the following guidelines cover an array of general types.
Use of abbreviation varies widely depending on the formality of writing employed for a given publication or a piece of content. Generally, the more formal the content, the less likely it is that abbreviation will be used, except in multiple references to terms commonly abbreviated or in tabular matter and other graphic elements.
In formal writing, journalistic contexts, and some informal content as well, terms are spelled out on first reference, followed by abbreviation in parentheses, as in “The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses satellite signals to fix the location of a radio receiver on or above the earth’s surface.” Thereafter, the abbreviation is used exclusively.
However, this tradition applies to single pieces of content, so that—unless, for example, an entire publication is devoted to articles about GPS technology—two articles in a publication that mention it will independently introduce the full spelled-out version of an abbreviation on first reference. Note, too, that specialized publications will likely abbreviate all references to widely used terms in that specialty.
Abbreviations consisting entirely of uppercase letters (including NY, US, FBI, and NASA) or that end with an uppercase letter (as in PhD) are not followed by a period; some publications retain periods in these types of abbreviations (at least two-letter ones), but that style is in decline. Abbreviations that end with a lowercase letter (a.m., Dr., i.e., etc.) are generally followed by a period.
Acronyms (abbreviations of phrases using initial letters of each word to form new word, such as AIDS) are almost invariably styled in all capital letters, though some, such as laser and scuba, have lost their uppercase form, and Nasdaq is treated as a proper noun. Initialisms (abbreviations of phrases using initial letters of each word, each of which is pronounced, such as FBI) are also generally capitalized. When using an article before an abbreviation, choose a or an depending on the first sound, not the first letter, of the abbreviation: “an NBA [en-bee-ay] team” but “a NASA [nasa] program.”
Avoid ampersands except in proper names (“Johnson & Johnson”) and in widely known abbreviations (“R&D,” for “research and development”).

“Species” and Its Descendants

An assortment of diverse words stem from the Latin word species, which had two distinct meanings, one of which is “a particular kind, sort, or type”—the pertinent sense for the following terms.

special: This word, coming into English from Old French, originally meant “better than ordinary” but later acquired the additional senses of “marked by a distinguishing quality” and “limited in function, operation, or purpose”; the noun specialist carries the latter connotation in describing someone with a narrow set of skills. The variant especial, taken from an Old French term meaning “important” or “preeminent”—treated in Modern French as spécial—originally had the same meaning as special but later acquired the additional senses of “particular” and “peculiar,” as well as “intimate.” The adverbial form, especially, is now much more common than the adjectival form.

specie: This technical term for coins, as opposed to paper currency, stems from the phrase “in specie,” meaning “in the actual or real form,” which in turn derives from an identical-looking phrase in Latin that means “in kind.” (The notion is that coins actually have monetary value, whereas paper currency merely represents such value.)

species: Species denotes a distinct type of life-form, but this biological sense was preceded by multiple now-rare connotations such as “appearance,” “notion,” and “resemblance.” Originally, it was associated with a classification in logic.

specific: This word, meaning “particular,” “precise,” or “special,” is an antonym of generic, just as, in biology, a species is more, well, specific than a genus. (Like species and specific, genus and generic are related.)

specious: This term has undergone the most deviation from its original sense, which is “fair” or “pleasing.” (It stems indirectly from the Latin word species by way of speciosus, which means “good-looking” or “beautiful.”) Now, it pertains to superficial attractiveness or false validity or value.

spice: This unexpected descendant of special, which denotes plant products used to season foods, derived from a later sense of species in Latin of “goods or wares,” pertaining to spices as a commodity. The additional, centuries-old, figurative sense of “something that provides relish or zest” survives, but the meanings “sample” and “trace” do not.

The second sense of the Latin term species, derived from the verb specere, is discussed in this post.

Daily Writing Tips, Posted: 30 Sep 2016 09:09 PM PDT

A Word about Figure (Photo) Captions

Photo captions are the most read body type in a publication. Of all the information content, only the titles of articles and abstracts have higher readership than captions. It follows that standards of accuracy, clarity, completeness and good writing are as high for captions as for other parts of the paper. As with headlines, captions must be crisp; as with articles, they must be readable and informative. 

   Figure Captions: Captions describe the photo or graph. Descriptions or discussion of the content of the Figure should be handled in the text of the article.