TL;DR no. But technically, an acronymn is made up of the initials that make up a term and turns out to be pronouncable. If it’s not pronouncable, it’s an initialism (the initials).
There must be a human baseline setting that drives us to make things pronounceable (rather than saying individual letters). Some stretch this “pronouncable” criterion a little far: Family Health Team (FHT) gets pronounced fuh-hih-t, which sounds like “fit” and makes me wonder what the “i” stands for every. single. time.
Classes of abbreviation
| Type | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Abbreviation | Shortened form | Ave. for Avenue, cm for centimetre, and photo for photograph |
| Acronym | “First” letter of each word, forming a pronouncable spelling | laser for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”* |
| Initialism | First letter of each word (sometimes stretched to other letters) | WTF for “what the fudge” and AM for “ante meridiem” |
*Laser has supplanted the full form, even; just like AM/PM. Spelling out the term in full would just confuse people, and so we don’t.
Acronyms and initialisms are types of abbreviations. But abbreviations don’t have to be acronyms or initialisms.
Do abbreviations take periods?
It depends. It depends on the conventions of the style you are following and the typical way it is styled, too. Dictionaries provide helpful guidance. (Be sure you’re using the dictionary preferred by your client/field.) But defer to the style sheet, always.
Some styles don’t even use periods in abbreviations like Dr or Edn (especially when the abbreviation ends with the final letter of the word, as in DoctoR and EditioN).
Read this other post for more on using periods in initialisms.
There are many style questions pertinent to abbreviations:
- Does it take periods between the letters? Like a.m. or AM.
- Is it all caps? Like CSA and CMOS.
- Is it all lowercase? Like laser and scuba are now.
- Is it a CamelCase? Like scientific abbreviations (NaCl or kW).
Capitals help distinguish acronyms from common words (like AIDS vs aids).
See this other post for more on style choices in various style guides.
How to decide
If you are creating an acronym, consider whether people can or will try to “pronounce” it, to help you decide. But beware of absurdities like “HEAT: study of Hydrogen dEsorpsion from cArbon Targets.” And, for the love of sensibility, don’t use those random caps when you spell it out, generally.
Read more on capilatization patterns and standards when spelling out an abbreviation in full.
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