Periods in Acronyms?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Courtney. I’m calling in from San Diego.

Hey, Courtney, welcome.

So my question is about acronyms. When looking into it, I learned that acronyms and initialisms are quite different. Basically, that acronyms are the words like RAM or NASA or OPEC are actually spelling themselves out, but that initialisms are the ones that like FBI and CIA that are just pronounced as their letters, which I found interesting that initialisms are not technically acronyms.

And my question for you guys is, when did the period in between the letters seem to go away? And is there a hard and fast rule for having a period between the letters in either acronyms or initialisms?

Oh, that’s a great question. So why, when we write the word NATO, don’t we usually put periods between the letters? And the periods serve to remind us of what has been abbreviated, what has been left out, right? They’re kind of placeholders. Like when we do contractions, the word can’t, that apostrophe represents all the letters we’ve removed to smush these two other words together.

And the word NATO or CBS, when we use periods between the letters, it just says we took the rest of the word out. We’re only using the first letter. Actually, every major style guy that I know says to not use the periods if the acronym or initialism is in all capitals.

So the only cases where, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style says to use the periods is when the last letter is lowercase. For example, when we write A-K-A, meaning also known as, we use the periods. Or if we write Dr. D-R, we would use a period after the R.

Now, this is only in North America, mind you, and mostly in the United States of America, because in the UK, they have a long history of not using the periods even after words like doctor or Mrs. MRS. They just don’t do it.

And even further, if a word is pronounceable, that is, if it’s an actual acronym, they may actually only capitalize the first letter and write it as capital N, lowercase a, lowercase s, lowercase a, NASA. Very interesting and confusing.

I haven’t done an exhaustive research into the timing on this, but I really start to see this fully and firmly take hold in the 1970s, late 1960s, early 1970s. We really start to see these periods disappear.

And if you look across the history of the printed word, topography has often been a moving target. It kind of comes and goes in fads, almost like fashion or the jokes of the day. We move together as a body and we decide kind of by pure group action to do something or to not do something.

Of course, we see this happening online as well. And that’s really by the 1970s, you see these periods drop out and they start disappearing from style guides as well.

The other place that you see these periods, I’m guessing here that you might have a little bit of the illusion, the recency illusion that this period dropping was more recent than it actually is, is that we’re usually taught as kids to use the periods when we’re first taught about these kinds of acronyms and initialisms.

And then later we’re taught as older, more educated writers that it’s okay to drop them. Does that make sense?

That makes sense.

Because in the very beginning, you need those periods there in order to make it very clear that we’re doing some kind of complicated abbreviating.

Cool. Well, Courtney, thank you so much for the call. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Thanks, Courtney. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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