A … is for abbreviation.

On By TomIn Achievement, Competitions, General, Insight, Novel, Poetry, Review, Short Stories

A[1] is for abbreviation, among other things. This is an area that is still misunderstood by some novice writers. In keeping with the theme of my blog, I’ll be using words associated with writing as I make my way through the alphabet. Now where was I? Oh yes, abbreviations.

A simple method for remembering the proper usage is to keep in mind, that the reader may not know the abbreviation; so use the full word first, followed by the abbreviation. You can then use the abbreviation throughout the remainder of your piece of writing.

For example: The hero in my book, ‘Beyond The Law’, is depicted at the beginning of the story as a member of the Special Air Service (SAS). That’s simple enough.

Where would we leave out an abbreviation? This would be the case, where it is no longer necessary, because of the accepted use of a shortened version of a word.

An example of this would be telephone, which up until recent times would have been abbreviated with an apostrophe, i.e. ‘phone; but now it is simply written as phone. Another one is the shortened version of aeroplane; ‘plane, which is now recognised as plane.

How about plurals that do not require an apostrophe?

CDs, MPs, DVDs, and so on.

This was just a glimpse at one area of writing, but there are many more to come. Now, on how many occasions did I fail to italicise all the words beginning with a? The first correct answer gets a name check on my next post.

Thank you for reading and I’ll see you tomorrow with B, for … bye.

11 thoughts on “A … is for abbreviation.”

  2. I learned the rule to spell out your abbreviation first then you can utilize it throughout the rest of the piece during college. I majored in journalism. I never went in to the reporter business but I have had to use it in my writing career for the military. It’s always good to have a refresher because when we don’t use it, we really do lose it.

    Jamie Dement (LadyJai)
    My A to Z
    Caring for My Veteran

    Like

    1. Hi Jamie. Thanks for dropping by. The abbreviation rule was one of the things I constantly got wrong when I started writing a few years ago. I realised myself, because I would find that I never used a uniform method, so I checked it out. Needless to say, I had a hell of a long list of corrections to make. Will be over your way tomorrow on my blog patrol.

      Like

    1. Hi Lynda, and thank you for dropping by and leaving the kind comment. I have a long list of ‘to do’ for today, but please rest assured you are now on there for a visit.

      Like

    1. Hi Donna. Many thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. I have a lot on today before I proceed with my blog patrol, but you’re on my list now. As a writer and artist I think I’ll find your work interesting.

      Like

  5. 9 maybe? Great post by the way, always interested when it comes to anything to do with writing. 🙂
    Happy A to Z’ing. 🙂

    Like

    1. Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment – and having a go at the question. You’re now listed on my blog patrol for later today.

      Like

  7. Julia Lund

    A great idea for the A-Z challenge. I’ll try and keep up! For some reason I’m not getting email notifications when you post, so am a bit behind …

    Like

Comments are closed.