By Chinua Asuzu
Judge Mark P. Painter queries probate lawyers, “Has any one ever come to your office seeking a will and testament? Are they two things? And did they then say, ‘I would like to give the rest of my estate to my spouse, the residue to my daughter, and the remainder to my son’? Would that be possible? Of course not—they are the same thing, so why do we use three words?”
Mark P. Painter, ‘Writing Smaller,’ Michigan Bar Journal (Oct. 2010), 54.
Abbreviations versus Acronyms
An abbreviation is “the shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the whole.” (Merriam-Webster).
AMCON, AU, UK, and USA are abbreviations for Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, African Union, United Kingdom, and United States of America, respectively.
An acronym is an abbreviation pronounceable as a word, typically formed from the first letters of each (main) word in a phrase.
All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms.
Some acronyms evolve into words, no longer merely pronounceable as words.
AMCON is an acronym because you can say it as a word (without mentioning the component letters).
AU, UK, and USA are not acronyms—you have to say each letter.
Merriam-Webster erroneously lists FBI as an acronym; it’s not.
CEO, the abbreviation for Chief Executive Officer, is not an acronym—it’s not pronounceable as a word: you have to say each letter.
Sonar is the acronym for “sound navigation and ranging”.
Since they are pronounceable as words and formed from the first letters of the constitutive words, AIDS and NATO are acronyms (for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Since they are not pronounceable as words (you have to say each individual letter), AU, DNA, NYPD, RNA, and UN are not acronyms—they are abbreviations and initialisms for African Union, deoxyribonucleic acid, New York Police Department, ribonucleic acid, and United Nations.
Laser is the acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”, but the prepositions by and of have been excused from contributing their initial letters to the acronym.
Acronyms do not take full stops. Write AIDS not A.I.D.S. Strictly, abbreviations that are not acronyms need full stops, but you can dispense with full stops when writing well-known abbreviations with all-caps. So write AU instead of A.U., though both are correct. Prefer NWLR to N.W.L.R. for Nigerian Weekly Law Reports. USA is better than U.S.A for United States of America.
To pluralize an abbreviation or acronym, don’t add an apostrophe before the s.
Wrong: 15 NGO’s were invited to bid for the rural health fund.
Correct: 15 NGOs were invited to bid for the rural health fund
Write Dr, Mr, and Mrs without full stops. The v in case names should not take a full stop: Stabilini Visinoni v Federal Board of Inland Revenue. And it’s v, not vs.
Chinua Asuzu, Learned Writing (Partridge, 2019), 626–627.
Note that:
“The above subject refers” and similar otiose phrasings are leprous legalese. Uninstall that pseudo-sentence from all your correspondence IMMEDIATELY and PERMANENTLY. It’s perfectly USELESS. Which other subject could the email or letter be about than the one described in the heading?
Also:
There’s no such hour as 12 am or 12 pm. Those times don’t exist on any clock. So never use those expressions.
A.m. means ante meridiem, which means “before noon”; p.m. means post meridiem, which means “after noon.”
After 11 am, the next hour is noon or midday, which you can express as midday, noon, 12midday, or 12noon.
After 11 pm, the next hour is midnight, expressed as midnight or 12midnight.
