Abbreviating Titles and Initialisms Throughout the Anglosphere

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cassandra. I’m calling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Welcome to the show.

Hi. So I’m originally from South Africa, and I’ve been living in the U.S. Now for about 17 years,

And so I’m really interested in the differences between the British English, which is what I grew

Up learning and speaking, and American English. So some of the differences are the obvious ones

In pronunciation and spelling and so on. But one of the ones that I’ve been puzzling about for a

While is the rules around abbreviations. So for example, in the US, from what I’ve established,

Whenever you abbreviate a word, you always put a period at the end of it, regardless of what that

Word is. But growing up in South Africa, I was taught that the rules around abbreviation depended

On what the word was. So for example, if you abbreviated the word professor, P-R-O-F, you would

Put a period at the end of it because at the end of the abbreviation, the F letter was in the middle

Of the original word. So you put the period on to show that it was truncated. But if you abbreviated

A word like Mr. Or Mrs. Or Doctor, the R or the S at the end of the abbreviation was at the end of

The original foreword. So you do not put a period at the end of it. So it would just be DR or MR or

MRS. And so that seems to be different from the rule here in the US. And that took me a while to

Get used to. So my question is, is this still a difference? Did I learn this wrong? I don’t think

I did because I have gone back to some of my books from when I was a child and they do have

Things like Mrs. And Doctor and Mr. With no period at the end of it. So I think I learned the rule

Correctly. But I wanted to hear from you. I work at university. I’m a university professor. I’ve

Asked my English faculty colleagues about this, and none of them knows about the British English

Rule. So I thought I’m going to have to come to the experts and ask you what the rules really are,

Why there’s this difference between British English and American English, and has it changed

Over the years from when I learned it.

Oh, what a mess.

I’ll do my best, though.

I’ll frog this thing the best I can.

All right, so you really summarized this very well.

I want to quote, though, the Economist Style Guide,

Which I think is a very efficient and very good example of British style,

Because what we’re really talking about here isn’t grammar, it’s style.

And style is different from grammar because it’s the choices that we make on how to represent verbal language in print.

And so this isn’t something that’s dictated intrinsically in the language.

It’s something that we can decide either as individuals or institutions to do with the language once we put it down on paper or on the screen.

And so The Economist says the British Convention is to use full stops after abbreviations but not after contractions.

So that’s their brief way of putting what you said.

So an abbreviation is where you remove something from the end.

That’s what you were explaining there.

So adjective abbreviated is ADJ period.

And a contraction would be doctor because you’ve removed letters from the middle.

So DR means nothing is removed from the end but only from the middle.

And so there’s no period after DR.

It makes a lot of sense.

There are exceptions to this.

And even in the United States, we don’t put periods in all of our abbreviations.

We don’t always put periods after the U and the S in the U.S.

Or UN or CEO or CFO.

And there are exceptions in the U.K. And the British style as well.

And you’ll see exceptions if you look in the Times style guide versus the Economist style guide or the Oxford style and usage guide.

So they’re not 100% consistent.

And God help you when you go to Canada, which is a mishmash of the British and the U.S. Styles.

Yeah, don’t go to Canada.

No, Canada is a lovely, wonderful country, and I recommend you go there.

Just don’t write for their newspapers because your mind will explode, Cassandra,

Because you’re going to have to reconcile South African style and British style and American style

And figure out which parts the Canadians chose to use.

The main reason there are all these differences is we established this regularization of the printed style

Long after all of these different countries really became culturally independent of each other.

That is, they had their own literature and publishing and journalistic practices already well underway,

And the U.S. Had stopped looking to the U.K. For its influences.

And South Africa had done the same thing.

It had stopped looking to the, at least for as English goes, had stopped looking to the

UK for its influences.

And Canada, even now, as its Commonwealth means less and less than it used to, has slowly

Stopped looking to the UK.

And more and more is under the sway stylistically of the US.

And so each country has its own traditions.

But even within the countries, the styles don’t agree.

In the U.S., the New York Times style guide doesn’t agree with the Chicago Manual of Style,

Doesn’t agree with the AP style on everything.

So you just pick a style guide and you stick to it.

So when you ask if you were taught incorrectly.

You were taught 100% correctly.

It was right for the place and time.

The advice is please your boss, please your editor, and then please yourself.

That’s the order.

Yeah, it still rankles me to put a period after, you know, doctor or whatever.

It just doesn’t come naturally to me.

Yeah, and I can see the logic for sure.

Thank you both so much.

I love your show.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, Cassandra.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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