Abbreviations and acronyms: a contrastive study - Essay Example

Abbreviations and acronyms: a contrastive study Summary: The essay explains how the use of abbreviation started, what abbreviation is and its examples are given. The use of abbreviation and acronym is increasing with the passage of time. Abbreviations are formed by different pattern that could range from resuming certain word of the main word or picking up one or few letters out of the word. The abbreviation is the wide term and it may include acronym. The guidelines for making acronyms are given. The use of abbreviation and acronyms is given along with the explanation that they will continue to expand. The main difference between the abbreviation and the acronym is discussed with examples from different disciplines. History of Use of Abbreviation: Initially the purpose was to save material and to use paper most effectively but now these are essential part of almost every document. Even the use of abbreviations is increasing while speaking making it more important. As things started settling and new things came front the use of abbreviation was no longer confined to old times but its use started increasing. To create uniformity the use of abbreviation increased. The use of abbreviation was not only common in old times; it is widely used as English language started advancing. Some of these are long lasting while few are only for short time. During communication through email abbreviations and acronyms are used widely. The example could be Please find the attached (PFA) document, these kinds of abbreviations are used. There are many others abbreviations that are used widely during different modes of communication. With the passage of time as the knowledge about various things increased and there were new discoveries, the words were increasing and becoming complex. So, there was need of an hour to adopt some method that could reduce the complex word into short that are more easily recorded. Romans decided to do this. They discovered the system to give names so that a universal word can be adopted for a certain thing. This thing was mostly associated with little or short spaces for writing but regardless of that, these words were used frequently as there was need to define new things and events (Grange & Bloom, 3). In fact the use of abbreviations now a day is increased so much that it may be difficult task for many in their field to recognize one. Abbreviations are different in form and nature as compared to the regular words, which again presents a big challenge. They also present difficulty in a sense that some abbreviations are made by omitting certain word from start some are by omitting certain words from end. When working with technological software and other related things, the use abbreviation has a negative impact. When new abbreviations are continued, the time gap remains very less for training and feeding data into machine. Similarly, when proper procedure is not followed to make abbreviation then it may also present problem (Ammar et al, 43). The classification of abbreviations and acronyms are always been difficult tasks because there is not much difference and definition of these are overlapping. Another thing is that there are some exceptions to the rules in particular category. The line of demarcation between these terms is very minor so people find it confusing. The main difference comes in choice of the word and the formation from the start or the end. Abbreviations Definition and Fromation: A word that is reduced to short form is basically abbreviation. The example is id est that is abbreviated as etc. The medicine doctor is abbreviated as M.d. The word confer is abbreviated as cf. The word numero is abbreviated as no. There are many possible arrangements of abbreviations like the words can be shortened by picking up letters from words. The example could be anno domini that is abbreviated as A.D. Another could be by reducing certain letters and resuming few letters. The examples could be of word doctor that is abbreviated as Dr. But abbreviations are not separate words that are pronounceable (US department of homeland Security, n.p.). So, basically abbreviation is not just the contraction of the word. The word abbreviation is abbreviated as abbr. versus is abbreviated as VS. Philosophy doctor is pronounced as Ph.D. The most important thing here is that periods are also used in the formation of the abbreviated words but the pattern of formation differs almost in every word. The pattern of formation differs that is why abbreviations are of different types. Main types of Abbreviations: Abbreviations can be of different types depending upon their formation: The one in which one letter is chosen out of a complete word. This is called as acronym. The example is exempli gratia which is abbreviated as e.g. In this one letter is chosen out of one word. The second is clipped compounds, in which more than one letter is chosen out of the complete word. The example of this is situation comedy which is abbreviated as sitcom. In this formation two words three letters out of the first word is chosen and three letters out of the second word is chosen making it a clipped compound. The third is clipping. In this a new word is formed out of the word. The example of this is the word advertisement, which is abbreviated as Ad. In daily use the frequent term that is used is Ad. The whole word advertisement is not used much. The fourth is hypocoristic, which is linked with abbreviated names. Names are also abbreviated in writings and other materials. This is the most common form of abbreviation. In scholarly materials like articles names are also abbreviated. The last names of the writers are abbreviated usually. This is included in most of the formatting styles as the names are long and make the whole text cumbersome if these long names are used again and again. The example of this could be if the name of the writer is Ali abdul Kareem, the last name comes first and the first and middle names are abbreviated, only first letters are used making it Kareem, A. A. (Zadok, n.p.). Truncation is also a type of abbreviation. Truncation is a word that is formed out of first few parts of basic words. The example is Dec that is used for the month of December. In this example first few words are retained out of the basic word. Similarly for Tuesday, tues is used. Initialism is also a type of abbreviation. In this the initial character of each word is taken. The example is British Broadcasting Corporation, in this one letter is taken out of basic word. The difference between acronym and initialism is that in initialism new word is not formed as in case of acronym. These are also used in everyday life. All Acronyms are abbreviations but it is not necessary that all the abbreviations are acronyms. The abbreviation is the wide term which can include acronym and initialism. Acronym Definition and Formation: The term Acronym has been created in 1943 and it is increasingly important in now a days. But the concept is still vague and there is no proper clarity. Different people and organizations have different mechanism for its use. There is always confusion regarding pronunciation (Baum, 49). The use of acronym is very old indeed. This was used to split the long word into short and memorize those easily. Scientist, students and many Government organizations were using this. According to the researches the technical term should be clearly differentiated and it is not useful if it is not clearly differentiated. When many of them saw unusual pattern, they define some guidelines or patterns to make sense. Language or the words are basic modes by which human make sense of things. There are more than four thousand languages in this world. English is one of the widely used languages. These leads people to the use the short words, so as to make words less tedious. An acronym is formed by combination of letters in the word. To reduce the word or a phrase that is short but one is able to pronounce is basically acronym. The example could be world Health organization-WHO. The acronym usually makes another short word out of the main word that is pronounceable. The example of acronym is Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It is written as Scuba and also pronounced in the same way. In fact instead of whole term the word Scuba is used mostly. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile-its acronym (ICBM) is used mostly instead of whole word Although the most used way is that acronym is pronounced as whole word but there is no hard and fast rule as to pronounce it completely. Some pronounce the whole word completely others pronounce it letter by letter. .Guidelines for making acronyms: The acronym should consist of more than two characters, meaning thereby that it should be at least of three characters. The most common and accepted way is that but off course there are few exceptions like in case of Information technology (IT). Although it should be more than than two letters but it should not be more than six letters so that it should be tedious like the original words. Acronym is usually a short form, so its purpose should be retained. In addition to that if the acronym is short there are fewer chances of mistakes and misunderstanding. The letters used for making acronyms must be upper case. Sometimes they are used in lower case letters but the rule or the guideline is to make it in upper case letters. They letters which are upper case are more prominent and give idea about the fact that the word has originated from some main word or the text. Numerals should not be used while making acronym. If numerals are used the line of demarcation between the symbol and acronym diminishes. Other symbols like hyphens should also be avoided. But an ampersand (&) can be used (US department of homeland Security, n.p.). Two acronyms are not joined to make a third one. They should be separate. As the purpose of the acronym is clarity so there should not be confusion and the meaning should be able understandable by all as a whole so the third word should not be formed out of it The acronym is pronounceable. As we was many examples that the acronym makes a separate word that is pronounceable. The example of this could be NATO, which comes out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The acronym is a simple form of a complex word. The complex word is reduced to make an acronym so the acronym must itself be short. But the short word should give some idea about the main word as a whole. The acronym should not be useable in few things; its scope should be wide so that can be use elsewhere. If the acronym is formed by following proper guidelines then they are used widely. The acronyms which are not formed by following the guidelines may not be used that widely as they do not convey the proper meaning that is intended. Its spelling should be according to the complete word. The acronym should be some reflection of the original word. There should not be additions in it. Its formation should convey the idea of the original word (Grange & Bloom, 4). Use of abbreviations and acronyms: The abbreviations and acronyms are widely used; every article may have many abbreviations in it and even in very formal materials also use these. These are part of everyday speech and their use is increasing day by day. They have the following uses. They are easy to remember. The words that are long and tedious are difficult to remember but when it comes to short word they become some points that are easy to remember. They are easy to communicate to others. The communicator and the listener can have the same meaning if that rare according to some guidelines or rules to create one mutual meaning. The abbreviations and acronyms are short but they covey the meaning of the basic word. The other factor that is old one is that it saves space on paper. The particular paper doesn’t become lengthy. The particular words that are abbreviated or whose acronyms are used get highlighted out of the large text. Every person who has a look on the paper may be able to get those words because they are different and short. The use of abbreviations is most common in software related to computer. They are widely used in medicals science and business language. Although coding is basically used but the whole concepts reverberate around the same thing. The names of languages of computer are also acronyms based. The example is COBOL. So, the use of these abbreviations and acronyms is not restricted to one industry or organization, instead it is wide spread and also increasing. They are means to uniformity. As Biological nomenclature and other biological terms are mostly same and they are universal so everybody dealing with it takes the same meaning of that specified thing. When somebody is saying DNA or dealing with DNA the word has uniform meaning. Similarly, when it comes to COBOL, the programmers worldwide understand the term In communication there should be complete understanding what the person is communicating and the other person who is receiving the message must able to made some sense out of it that what the other is trying to communicate. As long as abbreviations and acronyms are making sense of a certain word, they will be used widely. There is no possibility that they will not be used. Sometimes the terns need to be unified as we can see in the case of biological nomenclature which is formed to have uniformity wherever they are used. With the day by day increased use of abbreviations there are challenges as how to replenish the existing materials and become familiarize with the new one. The use of abbreviations and acroym is increased everywhere in the medical field, business terms and even in government organizations. Even some terms are mostly abbreviated and the use of basic word is very less. The example could be DNA in medical field. In the same way instead of enterprise resource planning, there is a frequent use of ERP. The use of acronyms and abbreviations make some kind of clarity as they are used widely. When the words are made they like radar they provide clarity. There is specification of that particular word. When these terms are searched it also provides easy way. These words have the reflection of the basic word, so, they provide useful information about the main concept. The whole concept of word is conceptualize and at the same time the length is saved and the document doesn’t look cumbersome as in case of scholarly articles and other written materials. Difference between An acronym and abbreviation: Acronym and abbreviations may have the same purpose in this regard they are similar but when it comes to formation and speaking they are different. The acronym is one of the types of abbreviation but differs in some aspects given below. The main difference between an abbreviation and an acronym is that in abbreviation there is not a new word formed but in case of acronym new word is formed out of the original word. Although some people may not pronounce it as a whole word, they may pronounce it as individual letters but as a rule and according to the guidelines it should be pronounceable. So, the new word which is an acronym has a pronunciation while this is not the case with abbreviation. For example, United States of America is abbreviated as USA but it is pronounced as individual letters, no one pronounce it as yosa. But in case of Acronym the new word is pronounceable like in the case of north Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO). Acronyms can be abbreviations but not all abbreviations are acronyms. Search and Rescue has an acronym SAR and its is pronounced in much the same way. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation is the term but its acronym laser is used most widely. In fact the Laser is taken as a word, and is written everywhere and while speaking it is used in the same way. So, with the above explanation there is clarity that the main differentiable factor is that of the formation of the new word. An acronym usually consists of first character of the main word. Like in the case of NATO but this is not the case with abbreviation, it does not necessarily formed of initial characters, in fact there are other possibilities. Almost all acronyms are made out of the first letter of the main word so they are differentiable in that aspect also. The abbreviation could omit first few letters or last few letters and even the abbreviation could take some middle letters of the main word. Take the example of abbreviation of et cetera, abbreviated as etc. Another main difference between abbreviation and acronym is that in acronyms usually symbols or characters like are not used. In the example of doctor we can use periods but in acronym formation symbols are avoided. Hyphen and other periods are not recommended to use when making an acronym, but in case of abbreviation these can be used. Anno domini can be abbreviated in both ways, with the periods or without the periods. But in the case of abbreviations these are used abbreviation is basically a short form that may not form another word but acronym gives a sense. The question comes that whether the use of acronyms will be reduced. Their use cannot be stopped. The use of both abbreviation and acronym is important. The use of these words will not reduce and there would be additional terms that will come out of the words. Their use is convenient and it prevents from tedious tasks. This is the need of an hour. . References Ammar, Waleed, et al. "ICE-TEA: in-context expansion and translation of English abbreviations." Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 41-54. Baum, S. V. "The acronym, pure and impure." American Speech 37.1 (1962): 48-50. Grange, Bob, and D. A. Bloom. "Acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms." BJU international 86.1 (2000): 1-6. US department of homeland Security.Acronyms and other forms of abbreviation.2008 Zadok, Gila. Abbreviations: A Unified Analysis of Acronym Words, Clippings, Clipped. Diss. Tel-Aviv University, 2002. Read More