From the course: Writing with Proper Punctuation
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How to use periods with abbreviations
From the course: Writing with Proper Punctuation
How to use periods with abbreviations
- There are a lot of different rules for using periods with abbreviations. Today, we're going to go over some of the general guidelines. Acronyms are the type of abbreviation you pronounce as words such as NASA and OPEC. And in general, you don't put periods after the letters in acronyms. Initials that represent a person's full name such as JFK and MLK also almost never take periods. Initialisms are the type of abbreviation for which you pronounce each letter such as FBI and CIA. If they're three letters or longer, they usually don't take periods after the letters. But if they're only two letters, such as US and UN, sometimes they do. For example, they do get periods in Associated Press style but not in most academic and business styles. Abbreviations that end in a lowercase letter such as St. for street and Mr. for mister get a period at the end in American English but they generally don't in British English if the last…
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