In order to prevent further confusion and embarrassment in meetings, this page provides definitions and examples of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms. After reading this, there is no excuse for using the wrong term.

(Here are some of the ones we use.)

(ə-brēˌvē-āˈshən)\ - a shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole\ Examples:

• Dr. for Doctor
• U.S. for United States
• lb. for pound (have no idea who came up with this)

Bonus Material: There is a special HTML tag for abbreviations, it's <code>&lt;abbr&gt;&lt;/abbr&gt;</code>, and should include a <code>title</code> attribute which spells-out the abbreviation. And since initialisms and acronyms are just special cases of abbreviations, this tag should be used for those as well.

Here is an example: <code><strong>&lt;abbr title="Idaho National Laboratory"&gt;INL&lt;/abbr&gt;</strong></code>

which renders as: <abbr title="Idaho National laboratory">INL</abbr>

(ăkˈrə-nĭm)\ - an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word\ - Similar, see Backronym, below.\ Examples:

• ASAP (As Soon As Possible) - sometimes used as an initialism
• NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
• OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
• Radar (Radio Detecting and Ranging)
• Scuba (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus)
• Sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging)
• WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)

(ĭ-nĭshˈə-lĭzˌəm)\ - an abbreviation that is pronounced one letter at a time\ Examples:

• ASAP (As Soon As Possible) - sometimes used as an acronym
• BFF (Best Friends Forever)
• CD (Compact Disc)
• DVD (Digital Video Disc)
• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
• FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
• IBM (International Business Machines)
• VHS (Video Home System [nobody ever knew this!])

Many people would simply call these abbreviations, which is fine.\ Some people would call them acronyms, which is not fine.

(ŭþˈər)\ - well, it's not an abbreviation, and it's not a word, but it's pronounced as if it was a word.\ Examples:

• BLOG - You can pronounce this as a word, but it's not an abbreviation, either. It's a truncation of “weblog.” A blog is essentially a website where the owner publishes content to the web. They became popular because they don't require any technical skills. Blogs often allow readers to comment, which are also then published on the site.
• EMail - Concatenation of “electronic” and“mail.” Used to be that it was written e-mail but I guess Websters decided to change that.
• QWERTY - Pronounced as a word but it's not an abbreviation for anything, it just refers to the standard keyboard layout that people have been using since the phrase “carriage return” meant something.
• VLOG - Can't easily pronounce this, but it's shorthand for “video blog” or “video log.” Basically a blog but the medium is video.

(băkˈrə-nĭm) - a constructed phrase that purports to be the source of an acronym.\ Examples:

• SPAM - Something Posing As Meat
• MOAB - Mother of All Bombs (in response to Saddam Hussein's “mother of all battles,” but really stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb)