Convenience or Confusion? Why You Need to Use Abbreviations Sparingly
Posted on Feb. 10, 2016 / Subscribe 0
By Joseph Priest, Corporate Writer, Syniverse
“The new PCs will arrive on Thursday” or “The new PC’s will arrive on Thursday”? “The PR department is located in the U.K. office” or “The P.R. department is located in the UK office”? And is “FYI” an acronym or an initialism?
In our speed-is-everything world, it seems we can’t write more than a couple of sentences without relying on some kind of abbreviation to try to save time. But constantly resorting to abbreviations can affect the clarity and quality of our writing. To help PR pros be on the lookout for this, I’ve put together some guidelines for using abbreviations in an article published in this month’s PR Tactics, “Convenience or Confusion? Why You Need to Use Abbreviations Sparingly.”
In the article, I cover some rules of thumb for when to use abbreviations as well as how to write the plurals of initialisms and acronyms, whether or not to use periods with these, and when it’s correct to use ampersands.
I hope the guidelines are useful, and I would love to know your thoughts on them. Email me at [email protected] to let me know if you come across any questions when you use abbreviations.
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