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Acronym

We explain what acronyms are, what they are for, their characteristics and various examples. Also, abbreviations and acronyms.

What are acronyms?

Acronyms are words composed from the initial letters of the words that form a complete name. That is, a way to abbreviate in a single term the total of the words used to name an institution, a body or a country, taking into account only the initial letters of its main terms.

Thus, for example, to refer to the World Health Organization, we can speak of the WHO, which would be its acronym. Note that we have not taken into account "of" or "the", as they are secondary terms of the full name, and we only abbreviate Organization, World and Health.

However, it is possible to find specific cases of acronyms that take into account one or several secondary terms, especially when this gives the pronunciation a certain necessary sonority, as in the case of the acronym “ PyME ”: Small and Medium Enterprises. Without taking into account the "and", the word would be more difficult to pronounce.

Acronyms are a form of language simplification, very common in both oral and written discourse, which should not be confused with acronyms, or with abbreviations.

Characteristics of acronyms

Acronyms are characterized by the following:

• Generally, they consider the main terms of the abbreviated words. When secondary terms are taken into account, they are written in lower case and instead of acronyms they are considered acronyms.
• They never take into account the accentsof the initial letters of the words, nor do they add accents to the corresponding stressed syllable when they are pronounced. Thus, for example, the following CIA (Central American Intelligence) are pronounced cia, but are not written with an accent mark.
• They are usually always written in capital letters, although there are exceptions to the case. But unlike abbreviations, the letters of an acronym are not separated by periods. Thus, it is written UN and not UN, unless the text is all written in capital letters and it is necessary to add the points for better understanding.
• They can sometimes incorporate numbers, which are read as they sound. 11-M would be "March eleven".
• The acronyms can be pronounced spelled(“ong” would sound o-ene-gé), or developing the full name (Non-Governmental Organization).

Examples of acronyms

Some examples of acronyms are:

• UN: O rganization of the United Nations
• OAS: O rganizationof A merican States
• ILO: International Labor Organization _ _ _
• WHO: World Health Organization _ _ _
• IVIC: Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research _ _ _
• USSR: U nion of S ovieticSocialist R epublics
• UFO: Unidentified Flying Object _ _ _ _ _
• ICU: I ntensive Care Unit _ _
• UNAM: National Autonomous University of Mexico _ _ _
• UBA: U niversity of B uenos A ires
• CD: C ompact D isc (from the English Compact Disk)
• DVD: Digital Video Disk (Digital Video Disk)
• FIFA: International Federation of Football Associations (from the French Féderation Internationale de Football Association)
• AFA: Argentine Football Association _ _ _
• WB: World Bank _ _
• IMF: International Monetary Fund _ _ _
• EU: European Union _ _
• WTO: World Trade Organization _ _ _
• NATO: N orth A ntic T reat O rganization
• UNICEF: UnitedN ations International Children's Emergency Fund _ _ _ _ _ _

Acronyms and abbreviations

Acronyms and abbreviations are not exactly the same, although they operate in a very similar way. Just as acronyms take the first letter of the words that make up a name to make a shorter version, abbreviations do the same, but with any type of word, word, expression or title, in order to make it more succinct at the time. to write

Thus, abbreviations are usually followed by a dot, to indicate that there is an omitted text, and they can use special characters to designate some specific relationship within the abbreviation. For example:

• , Mrs.: Sir, Madam.
• AAVV.: Various authors
• SA: Compañía Anónima
• : Captain
• Dir, ^to: Director, Director
• et al. : Latin adverb for "and others"
• : and so on
• SJC: Our Lord Jesus Christ
• D.: Post Data
• HR: Human Resources

More in: Abbreviations

Acronyms and acronyms

Finally, we must distinguish acronyms from acronyms, which are basically a type of acronym, only that they also take into account the less important terms to abbreviate the words of a name, or take more letters than just the first ones. Thus, they constitute an abbreviated term that is read like an ordinary word, without respecting the original capital letters.

Many times, the acronyms end up being acronyms, so common that their use is made, and they start to be written in an ordinary way, almost forgetting that they are the acronyms of something else. Thus, examples of acronyms are:

• Untref: National University of Tres de F ebruary _
• AIDS: Acquired Immune Syndrome _ _ _ _ _
• Laser: Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation _ _ _ _
• unasur: U nion of South American Nations
• office automation: office and computer science
• Radar: Detection and measurement of distance by radio (from the English Ra dio D etection Radioand _ _ _