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What is the difference between abbreviation and acronym?

Do you know what brachygraphy is? Calm down, it has nothing to do with medicine, and it's not even about eating.

Brachygraphy (from the Greek, brachys = short, gráphein = to write) is the technique of writing semiological elements in a reduced form, such as abbreviation, abbreviation and acronym. These are called brachygrams or brachygraphic reductions. Or simply reductions.

Our Portuguese language is rich, whether in the lexical aspect, or in the social aspect — see the different ways of speaking in Brazil and in other Portuguese-speaking countries. And our grammar is one of the most complex among Indo-European languages. Thus, the use of brachygrams is, indirectly, a consequence of this vocabulary richness.

As a content writer, you need to perfectly understand the use and differences between the forms of reductions, recurrent in texts of different genres and languages. It is worth noting: you can use reductions both to write a unit of measurement and to recreate a dialogue with traces of orality, characteristic of messaging applications, for example.

Therefore, in this post, we will address the origin and uses of the three most common types of reductions in our language: abbreviation, abbreviation and acronym. Check out!

Abbreviation and Acronym

Today, with the fast pace of communication, we tend to prefer increasingly brief phrases and words. Saving money in speaking and writing is a common trend, as is easily seen in online language. But this is also true even in more formal speeches or writings.

And nothing better to represent this economy of characters and words than brachygraphic reductions, such as abbreviation, abbreviation and acronym. Although many people confuse the terms, they have different meanings.

Even abbreviation and abbreviation, which many dictionaries bring as synonyms, have a slight difference. Let's see:

1. Abbreviation

The abbreviation can be considered the shortening of a word, making use of one or more syllables. It usually ends with an abbreviated period, a sign that indicates its reduction.

There is no rule for the formation of abbreviations. Just the principle that the word must be interrupted at some point, usually ending in a consonant.

The simplest way to abbreviate a word is to take the first syllable of it, add the first letter of the second syllable — if this is a vowel, continue until you reach the next consonant — and put a period.

Examples:

Original version	Short version
Grammar	Gram.
Management	Adm.
Algebra	alg.
clinic	Clinic

When the first syllable of the words is too short or is a single vowel, it extends to the next syllable. For example:

Original version	Short version
Agriculture	agri.
Analytical	Anal.
Anatomy	Anat.
oenology	Enol.

Another case is with words formed by prefixes. The most common is that the prefix appears followed by the first syllable or the first consonant:

Original version	Short version
Anthropology	Anthrop.
Astrophysics	Astrophys.
Biochemistry	biochem.

There are cases of abbreviations that totally escape these parameters above. Common examples are:

Original version	Short version
Company	company
limited	Ltd.
checking account	C/C
doctor, doctor	Dr., Dr.

And, finally, there are cases of official abbreviations, governed by the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards — ABNT, which are used in official and academic documents.

This is the case, for example, of the months of the year, used in the references. The rule is simple: use the first three letters of the name, ending in a full stop: jan., fev., mar. etc. The only exception is with “may”, which does not reduce and must be written in full.

Other normative examples of ABNT are:

Original version	Short version
Announcement	Announcement
official diary	OF
Exercise	exercise
Export	expose
Financial	finance
Press	Imp.
Indicative	index
Book store	book
Lithuanian	Lithuania