acronym

thumb|NASA is an acronym that expands to National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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An acronym is a word formed by taking the first letters of a series of words, like NASA, which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Acronyms matter because they provide a shorter, easier way to refer to long names or phrases in everyday conversation and writing.

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Commons category: Acronyms
exact match: www.lexinfo.net/ontology/2.0/lexinfo#acronym
P13411: athletics

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Article

54 sections

Contents

Etymology
Dispute over the scope of ''acronym''
Dictionaries
Style and usage guides
Historical development and antedating
Examples
Historical and current use
Early examples in English
Current use
Expansion at first use
Jargon
As mnemonics
Acronyms as legendary etymology
Orthographic styling
Punctuation
Showing the ellipsis of letters
Ellipsis-is-understood style
Pronunciation-dependent style and periods
Other conventions
Representing plurals and possessives
Case
All-caps style
Normal case and anacronyms
Mixed-case variant
Pronunciation-dependent style and case
Numerals and constituent words
Casing of expansions
Changes to (or wordplay on) the expanded meaning
Pseudo-acronyms and orphan initialisms
Redundant acronyms and RAS syndrome
Redefined acronyms
Backronyms
Contrived acronyms
Macronyms/nested acronyms
Recursive acronyms
Non-English languages
Specific languages
Chinese
Korean
Japanese
German
Hebrew
Indonesian
Malaysian
Russian
Swahili
Vietnamese
General grammatical considerations
Declension
Lenition
See also
Explanatory notes
References
External links

thumb|NASA is an acronym that expands to National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

An acronym is an abbreviation formed using the initial letters of a multi-word name or phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation.