Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations)

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This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus.

Shortcuts: WP:MOSABBR MOS:ABBR

See Wikipedia:Shortcuts for redirects to the Wikipedia namespace.

See Wikipedia:Edit summary legend for abbreviations in edit summary boxes.

The objective of this Manual of Style (or style guide) is to provide guidelines for the use of abbreviations and acronyms in Wikipedia articles. Adherence to the following guidelines is not required; however, usage of these guidelines is recommended. Maintaining consistency will allow Wikipedia to be read, written, edited, navigated, and used more easily by readers and editors alike.

Acronyms as words in article titles

Acronyms should be used in page naming if the subject is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (e.g., NASA and radar). In order to determine the prominence of the abbreviation over the full name, consider checking how the subject is referred to in popular media such as newspapers, magazines, and other publications.

Many acronyms are used for several things; naming an article with the full name helps to avoid clashes. A useful test to determine what an acronym usually refers to can be done by checking abbreviations.com, and finding the relative usage for the acronym. If it is found that an acronym is chiefly used to refer to a particular subject, the article on that subject can be expressed as the acronym. A disambiguation page can then be created for the other subjects.

Whether the acronym or the spelled-out phrase is preferable in many particular cases is debatable, but this can work itself out with the #REDIRECT [[new page name]] command. For instance, DMCA and Digital Millennium Copyright Act have oscillated as to which is primary and which page redirects. Other less controversial pairs are MPAA versus Motion Picture Association of America and IMDb versus Internet Movie Database.

However, in many cases no decision is necessary because a given acronym has several expansions, none of which is the most prominent. Under such circumstances the articles should be at the spelled-out phrases and the acronym should be a disambiguation article providing descriptive links to all of them. See, for example, AJAR, which disambiguates between Australian Journal of Agricultural Research and African Journal of AIDS Research. If the acronym and the full name are both in common use, both pages should certainly be created, and one should redirect to the other (or be a disambiguation listing).

Acronyms as disambiguators

• In order to make link text follow the MoS, please use standard abbreviations as disambiguators, when necessary. For example, Great Northern Railway (U.S.) and Labour Party (UK). Abbreviations are preferred over "United States" and "United Kingdom", for brevity.
• To help editors, please create redirects that contain (US). For example, Great Northern Railway (US) should redirect to Great Northern Railway (U.S.).

Acronym usage in article body

The full name should always be the first reference in an article, and thereafter acronyms are acceptable, as long as the acronym is given as an explicit alternative early (usually in parentheses). If used, acronyms should be used consistently throughout the article. There is no hard rule about periods—in general, avoid them. In either case, a consistent format should be employed throughout the article unless a specific preferred usage is otherwise (for example, U.S., but UK).

Acronyms in category names

For the use of acronyms in names of categories, see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Archive 7#Abbreviations: to expand or not to expand?.

Abbreviation types not included in this guideline

• Abbreviations in names of persons, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Middle names - abbreviations of names
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships), for example: RMS Queen Elizabeth 2; USS Monitor;...
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft), for example: Douglas DC-3; Nakajima B5N;...

In Wikipedia, abbreviations for common terms are often in parentheses within the head paragraph. Wikipedia has found it both practical and efficient to use the following abbreviations.

Special considerations

• Current and former postal codes and abbreviations – such as TX for Texas, Calif. for California, Yorks for Yorkshire – should not be used to stand in for the full names in normal text.
• Mt. (and the British Mt) should not be used. Mount or Mountain should be spelled out in most situations. Exceptions are made for official names and registered trademarks. (Similarly "Saint" vs "St." or "St" in placenames should depend upon their official usage).
• Editors should almost invariably give the full name of something to be abbreviated the first time it is used, unless it is part of everyday speech and writing (such as "e.g.", "2 a.m.", etc.). For example, "The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is heavily involved with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). WIPO's long-standing ICANN role..."
• If a sentence ends with a dotted abbreviation, do not double the dot to signify the end of the sentence.

See also

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations
• Wikipedia:Disambiguation
• Wikipedia:Edit summary legend