Abbreviations NEW!
Libby Ellwein
This appendix includes common abbreviations for some of the documents that employees may present from the Lists of Acceptable Documents. This appendix is not an exhaustive list of all the documents an employee may choose to present. See the Lists of Acceptable Documents on Form I-9 for a complete list.
On July 1, 1963, the Post Office Department introduced the five-digit ZIP Code. At the time, most addressing equipment could accommodate only 23 characters (including spaces) in the bottom line of the address. To make room for the ZIP Code, state names needed to be abbreviated. The Department provided an initial list of abbreviations in June 1963, but many had three or four letters, which was still too long. In October 1963, the Department settled on the current two-letter abbreviations. Since that time, only one change has been made: in 1969, at the request of the Canadian postal administration, the abbreviation for Nebraska, originally NB, was changed to NE, to avoid confusion with New Brunswick in Canada.
A medical Web site provides information for both doctors and patients. The site includes a set of cascading dictionaries; a very specialized medical dictionary is first, followed by a second medical dictionary for the general public. The cascade also includes a list of acronyms and abbreviations that are unique to the site, and finally there is a standard dictionary as well. The standard dictionary at the end of the list provides definitions for most words in the text. The specialized medical dictionary yields definitions of unusual medical terms. Definitions for words that appear in more than one dictionary are listed in the order of the cascade. The meaning of acronyms and abbreviations is provided by the list of acronyms and abbreviations.
Prefer English terms over Latin abbreviations. Don't use i.e. ore.g.; instead, use that is or for example, respectively.One exception: it's okay to use etc. insome circumstances.
Make up your own abbreviations. There are plenty of popular ways to shorten particular common words and phrases but you can use your own abbreviations and symbols too. Write down what each symbol means so you don't get confused later.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has compiled this list of abbreviations commonly used by the agency staff, the regulatory community, and the nuclear industry. To create this list, the NRC staff sought to identify abbreviations that are so commonly used that some staff may not first define the term before using it either in writing or in speaking. This list of abbreviations is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, this NUREG does not recommend one abbreviation to the exclusion of others. Nor does this NUREG intend to capture every abbreviation ever used in an NRC document. The audience of this NUREG is the public, stakeholders, industry, and NRC employees. The goal of this NUREG is to improve communication with and within the NRC.
Avoid excessive abbreviations. Use standard abbreviations only; do not make up abbreviations. Spell out on first mention and use only if it occurs a substantial number (>3 times) of times (subject to editorial discretion). Some specific examples follow:
In long titles, the following abbreviations can be used without being spelled out, provided the terms are spelled out in the Abstract or, for letters, in the first paragraph. These terms may also be used in running heads.
Spelling out Acronyms
In general, each time you use an acronym for the first time in the body of a report or on a given webpage, spell it out and put the acronym in parentheses after the full name. However, you do not need to spell out most common abbreviations and acronyms (e.g., AC, DC, cm, m, Hz, kW, MW, GW, and rpm) in most technical reports.
Abbreviating Plurals
Use a small s (no apostrophe) for plurals of most abbreviations. For plurals of units of measurement, omit the s (e.g., 15 cm, 6 m, 5 million Btu, 75 dB, 40 W).
Other abbreviations are acceptable when a long, cumbersome, or awkward word or phrase is used. However, even in these instances, a term should generally be abbreviated in each of the 5 parts of a manuscript (abstract, main text, figures, tables, and appendices) only when the abbreviation is used at least 3 times in that part of the manuscript.
Many specialized fields have their own terms and abbreviations that are commonly used in the field but not well-known to readers outside that field. Authors should consider whether abbreviating those terms might be confusing for readers and whether using the expanded term, rather than the abbreviation, might improve understandability. In addition, in certain fields, abbreviations may not have been standardized for certain terms. This is especially true in the fields of pharmacology, respiratory physiology, and radiology. The following lists are provided to help standardize abbreviations in these fields.
There are a few common trends in abbreviating that you should follow when using MLA, though there are always exceptions to these rules. For a complete list of common abbreviations used in academic writing, see Appendix 1 in the MLA Handbook (9th ed.).
The MLA Handbook (9th ed.) encourages users to adhere to the common scholarly abbreviations for both in-text citations and in the works-cited page. Here is the list of common scholarly abbreviations from Appendix 1 of the MLA Handbook (9th ed.) with a few additions:
The use of abbreviations, acronyms and symbols in prescribing and transcribing medication orders too often results in the misinterpretation of the order's intent. Busy health care practitioners often use these shortcuts to indicate drug names, dosages, the patient's condition and route of administration. The result can be omission errors, extra or improper doses, administering the wrong drug, or giving a drug in the wrong manner. Stopping the use of unapproved abbreviations, acronyms and symbols can go a long way toward preventing these errors, but that's proven difficult to accomplish. This briefing examines ways that hospitals can put an end to the practice.
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