College Editorial Guide - Abbreviations/Acronyms

Overview
Part of creating a consistent, well-organized print piece begins with the text. At Concordia, a house style guide has been created for all college publications. While there are many style guides available for everything from general correspondence to highly technical research papers, most documents produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing are based on the Associated Press Stylebook. This book, which is updated every year, is the stylebook most American newspaper text is based upon. The Associated Press style focuses on saving space. In recent years, the Office of Communications and Marketing has compiled a list of style usages based upon Associated Press but unique to the college (house style). For example, Concordia Language Villages is always capitalized and abbreviated only when absolutely necessary. Concordia Language Villages is not found in the Associated Press Stylebook and therefore has come under our own style rules.

If style issues arise, the chief copy editor refers to the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook. If the answer does not appear there, the next reference is the fourth edition of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. The AP Stylebook contains rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation and word and numeral usage, as well as additional sections with sports, business and punctuation guidelines. The priority is to make print pieces usable and understandable to the intended audience, and to remain consistent in style within each piece.

Abbreviations and acronyms
Abbreviations are great tools for communicating, when used correctly. When used improperly, however, they can cause unnecessary confusion for your reader. Following these guidelines helps produce consistent texts.

An acronym is a word formed from the first letter or letters of a series of words. An abbreviation is not an acronym. Example: Scuba is an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Use all caps, but no periods, in longer abbreviations when the individual letters are pronounced (e.g. ABC, CIA, FBI).

When trying to decide on whether to use “a” or “an” before an acronym, go by the sound of the first letter of the acronym, not the sound of the first word. For example, write an FBI agent, as opposed to a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.


Information For:

current students
faculty and staff		 parents
alumni		 high school students
admitted students