Acronyms

Depending on how long it’s been in the language, an acronym might be spelt with:

• all capitals
• an initial capital only
• no capitals.

If in doubt, check the Macquarie Dictionary for the most common Australian usage. If you’re still unsure, use all capitals.

It was once accepted style to place full stops after each the letter in an acronym, particularly if it represented an organisation’s name (N.A.T.O., U.N.I.C.E.F.). This has not been the common practice for some decades now, as it was unnecessary for clarity and contemporary practice tends toward minimal punctuation.

Bear in mind that you do not need to use initial capitals for an acronym when you write it out in full unless it’s a proper noun or formal title.

One of the most common errors with acronyms occurs when you need to pluralise it. Don’t be tempted to use an apostrophe, because this is not a contraction or possessive. Simply add a lower case ‘s’ to the end of the acronym.

If the acronym includes an ‘s’, as often happens with Australian government departments, treat it as singular and follow the same conventions for possession. Add an apostrophe with a lower case ‘s’ to the acronym, even if the full title is plural.

In formal documents such as reports and submissions, you should generally introduce an acronym when you first use it by:

• spelling the phrase out in full
• adding the acronym in round brackets at the end.

In a long document, consider doing this for each chapter in case some readers have come directly into that part of the text. You might also want to include a reference list or glossary at the end of a report if there are a lot of acronyms that readers may be unfamiliar with.

However, if an acronym is so familiar that your readers will immediately understand it, you may not need to introduce it. For example, you shouldn’t need to spell out acronyms that:

• are common in your organisation, if you’re writing for an internal audience
• have over time replaced their spelt-out form.