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What is Acronym?
An acronym is a term formed by each of the initial letters of an expression made up of several words. The word sigla, as such, comes from the Late Latin sigla, meaning 'ciphers' or 'abbreviations'.
It is also known by the name of acronym to each of the letters that make up the acronym in question. Thus, for example, OAS stands for Organization of American States, in the same way that the letters o, e and a are.
The acronyms are used to refer in an abbreviated way to organizations, institutions, companies, associations, objects, devices, technologies, systems, methods, etc., whose names are made up of several terms.
Rules for the composition of acronyms
In the formation of acronyms not all the words are taken, but only the nouns, verbs and adjectives, while the articles, determiners, prepositions and conjunctions are not taken into account. For example: United Nations Organization returns UN.
accents
Acronyms should never be accented, neither when one of the letters it takes was originally accented, nor when current spelling conventions so suppose. For example: NATO, for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or CPI, for consumer price index.
plural words
Acronyms that abbreviate two plural words must be written with double initials: USA, for the United States, or HR, for human resources.
Capital letters
The acronyms, as a general rule, must be written in capital letters (OAS, VAT, FIFA), except in cases where, as a consequence of their use, they are considered as a common name by dictionaries, as in the case of UFO , flying object. unidentified, icu, intensive care unit. _ _
dots and spaces
Acronyms should not be separated by periods or spaces. For example: ICU, intensive care unit, USA, United States.
Plural
Acronyms do not have graphic plurals. To mark a plural, it must be accompanied by the acronym of an article, a demonstrative or an adjective. For example: " the NGOs...", "these NGOs...", " some important NGOs..." It is incorrect to indicate the plural in writing by adding an -s at the end: ONG's, ONGs.
Gender
Acronyms adopt the gender of the main word of the expression. For example, in the UN, from United Nations Organization, the main term is "organization", which is feminine, so we will speak of the UN.
letters and numbers
Acronyms can also be formed by combining numbers and letters. For example: G8, from the group of eight, or 11-S, from September 11.
Pronunciation
Acronyms can be pronounced by spelling or by syllabic pronunciation:
spelling
By spelling, the acronym is referred to by articulating the name of each of the letters of which it is composed, such as ONG, pronounced “o-ene-ge”.
syllabic pronunciation
In the syllabic pronunciation, the acronym is read as a word, however, for this the composition of the acronym must allow its pronunciation, for example, NATO can be pronounced "nato".
Acronyms
It happens that when an acronym is so frequent that it can be considered fully incorporated into the vocabulary of the language, then it becomes a common word, and, consequently, it is governed by the current orthographic rules of the language, this means that it adopts the conventions for the formation of plurals (UFOs), for their accentuation (laser, plane), and that can be written in lowercase, except when referring to a proper noun, in which case the initial will be capitalized as long as it is formed by more of four letters. For example: Unesco, from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Examples of acronyms
- UN, Organization of the United Nations.
- OAS, Organization of A merican States .
- NATO, from the North A ntic T reat O rganization .
- CPI, for consumer price index .
- VAT , value added tax. _
- FIFA, International F ederation of A ssociated Football .
- RAE, from Royal Spanish Academy .
- GDP, of gross domestic product.
- IMF, International Monetary Fund . _
- DNI ,of national identity document.
- APA, from the American Psychological Association or 'American Psychological Association' .
- ICU , intensive care unit. _
- NGO, non - governmental organization.
- Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , or ' Cultural, Scientific and Educational Organization of the United Nations '.
