Wednesday 29 May 2013

On Acronyms

They are not the same as abbreviations and/or initialisms:

Acronym: A new word formed by the first letters of each of the successive words in the term. (e.g. IKEA, Radar, Laser, NATO)

Abbreviation: A shortened form of a word/phrase used in place of the whole term. (e.g. Mtl, wknd, amt, etc)

Initialism: An abbreviation formed from initial letters that do not spell out a word therefore must be pronounced as individual letters. (e.g. HMV, SXSW, ABC, FDA)


(IKEA stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd)

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