Acronyms

Section 9.4

Acronyms

Unless you are following a style guide thatspecifies otherwise, observe the following conventions.

Use acronyms to shorten phrases in order to save space or toavoid awkward repetition of phrases. Acronyms are abbreviations of the things they represent andare formed by combining the first, and sometimes other, lettersof the principal words.

     AIDS      Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
     RAM      random-access memory
     ROM      read-only memory
     DOS      Disk Operating System
     FTP      file transfer protocol
     HTML      Hypertext Markup Language
     HIV      Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Guidelines for Using Acronyms

Capitalize acronyms, and do not use periods. When acronyms become integrated into the language as common nouns (for example, laser, radar, or scuba), they are no longer capitalized.

When using an acronym the first time, spell the phrase out and follow it with the acronym in parentheses. Then you may use the acronym by itself.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was neverintended to be a common programming language.  The originalassumption was that most word processing applications wouldautomatically generate HTML code.

This convention is necessary to avoid ambiguity. NMR, for example, may refer to nuclear magnetic resonance or to the National Maritime Repository.

If your prose is laden with acronyms, provide a list of terms in the front matter of your document as a guide to the reader.

To form plurals of acronyms, add a lowercase s without an apostrophe:

The number of MDs in the region has declined.

## Acronyms ##

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AIDS	Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
RAM	random-access memory
ROM	read-only memory
DOS	Disk Operating System
FTP	file transfer protocol
HTML	Hypertext Markup Language
HIV	Human Immunodeficiency Virus