Teaching grammar in senior grades

   CONTENTS

Introduction..............................................................................................................3

Part I. The General notions of abbreviation in English...........................................4

1.1 The History of abbreviations...................................................................4

1.2Developments create new abbreviations……..........................................8                   

   1.3Abbreviation is the major way of shortening……………………………….6       

   Part2.The appereance of new abbreviation…………………………………….13

2.1Using abbreviation in modern English……………………………………….16 2.2 Transformation of word-groups……………………………………… 18             Introduction                                                                                                                  The theme of my work sounds as following: “Abbreviation is a new type of word-building in English” This work can be characterized by the following.

The actuality of this work caused by several important points. The abbreviation is one of the main trends in development of Modern English, especially in its colloquial layer, which, in its turn at high degree is supported by development of modern informational technologies and simplification of alive speech. So the significance of my work can be proved by the following reasons:

a) Abbreviation is one of the developing branches of lexicology nowadays.

b) Abbreviation reflects the general trend of simplification of a language.

c) Abbreviation is closely connected with the development of modern informational technologies.

Having based upon the actuality of the theme it is formulated the general goals of course paper.

-to study, analyze, and sum up the general notions of abbreviation in English;

-to learn  the history of abbreviations;

-to study abbreviations as the major way of shortening;

-to demonstrate the significance of the problem for those who want to brush up their English.

If we say about the new information used within my work I may note that the work studies the problem from the modern positions and analyzes the modern trends appeared in this subject for the last ten years. In particular, the shorten language of computer chats was taken into consideration.

The practical significance of the work can be concluded in the following items:

a) The work could serve as a good source of learning English by young teachers at schools and colleges.

b) The lexicologists could find a lot of interesting information for themselves.

c) those who would like to communicate with the English-speaking people through the Internet will find a shortened language of chats in my work.

If we say about the methods of scientific approaches used in our work we can mention that the method of typological analysis was used.

The general structure of the course paper looks as follows:the work is composed onto three major parts: introduction, main part and conclusion.  The introductory part  tells about the general content of the work. The second part bears the two points in itself. The first point tells about the history of abbreviations. The second item analyses abbreviations as the major way of shortening. The third part tells about new abbreviations. The conclusion of the qualification work sums up the ideas discussed in the main part and shows the ways of implying of the course paper.

I. THE GENERAL NOTIONS OF ABBREVIATION IN ENGLISH

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning short) is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv. or abbrev. In strict analysis, abbreviations should not be confused with contractions or acronyms (including initialisms), with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance.An abbreviation is a shortening by any method; a contraction is a reduction of size by the drawing together of the parts. A contraction of a word is made by omitting certain letters or syllables and bringing together the first and last letters or elements; an abbreviation may be made either by omitting certain portions from the interior or by cutting off a part; a contraction is an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily a contraction. However, normally acronyms are regarded as a subgroup of abbreviations (e.g. by the Council of Science Editors). Abbreviations can also be used to give a different context to the world itself, such as (PIN Number, wherein if the abbreviation were removed the context would be invalid).

1.1. The history of abbreviations

Abbreviation has been used as long as phonetic script existed, in some senses actually being more common in early literacy, where spelling out a whole word was often avoided, initial letters commonly being used to represent words in specific application. By classical Greece and Rome, the reduction of words to single letters was still normal, but can default.                                                                      An increase in literacy has, historically, sometimes spawned a trend toward abbreviation. The standardization of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviation. At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce their copy time. An example from the Oxford University Register, 1503:                                          Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ.                     In the 1830s in the United States, starting with Boston, abbreviation became a fad. For example, during the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very trendy. The use of abbreviation for the names of "Father of modern etymology" J. R. R. Tolkien and his friend C. S. Lewis, and other members of the Oxford literary group known as the Inklings, are sometimes cited as symptomatic of this. Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.                                                                   After World War II, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuation points after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept such use until more recently, and still maintain it more than Britons. The classic example, considered by their American counterparts quite curious, was the maintenance of the internal comma in a British organization of secret agents called the "Special Operations, Executive" — "S.O.,E" — which is not found in histories written after about 1960.                                                         But before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: "M." is the abbreviation for "monsieur" while "Mme" is that for "madame". Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously.[citation needed]                                                                                     1.2Developments create new abbreviations                                                                                                                 Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. The U.S. media tend to use periods in two-word abbreviations like United States (U.S.), but not personal computer (PC) or television (TV). Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations completely.        Minimization of punctuation in typewritten matter became economically desirable in the 1960s and 1970s for the many users of carbon-film ribbons, since a period or comma consumed the same length of non-reusable expensive ribbon as did a capital letter.           Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s allowed for a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant- and text messaging. SMS for instance supports message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set). This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated. More recently Twitter, a popular social network service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits.[1]

1.3. Abbreviations is the major way of shortening

The fashionable use of abbreviation - a kind of society slang - comes and goes in waves, though it is never totally absent. In the present century, however, it has been eclipsed by the emergence of abbreviations in science, technology, and other special fields, such as cricket, baseball, drug trafficking, the armed forces, and the media. The reasons for using abbreviated forms are obvious enough. One is the desire for linguistic economy — the same motivation which makes us want to criticize someone who uses two words where one will do. Succinctness and precision are highly valued, and abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise style. They also help to convey a sense of social identity: to use an abbreviated form is to be 'in die know' - part of the social group to which the abbreviation belongs. Computer buffs the world over will be recognized by their fluent talk of ROM and RAM, of DOS and WYSIWYG. You are no buff if you are unable to use such forms, or need to look them up (respectively, 'read-only memory', 'random-access memory', 'disk operating system', and 'what you see is what you get'). It would only irritate computer-literate colleagues and waste time or space (and thus money) if a computer-literate person pedantically expanded every abbreviated form. And the same applies to those abbreviations which have entered everyday speech. It would be strange indeed to hear someone routinely expanding BBC(the British Broadcasting Corporation), NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization), NASA(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), AIDS(acquired immune deficiency syndrome), and all die other common abbreviations of contemporary English.[3]           In the process of communication words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extra-linguistic. By extra-linguistic causes changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more i information in the shortest possible time.

There are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages are assimilated in English they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, e.g. the Latin borrowing «fanaticus»  is shortened to «fan» on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc.           There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical.   Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing.    Graphical abbreviations are restricted in use to written speech, occurring only in various kinds of texts, articles, books, advertisements, letters, etc. In reading, many of them are substituted by the words and phrases that they represent, e.g. Dr. = doctor, Mr.=mister, Oct.= October, etc.; the abbreviations of Latin and French words and phrases are usually read as their English equivalents. It follows that graphical abbreviations cannot be considered new lexical vocabulary units. It is only natural that in the course of language development some graphical abbreviations should gradually penetrate into the sphere of oral intercourse and, as a result, turn into self-contained lexical units used both in oral and written speech. That is the case, for instance, with a.m. ['ei'em] — ‘in the morning, before noon’; p.m. ['pi:'em] - ‘in the afternoon’; S.O.S. ['es ‘ou ‘es] (=Save Our Souls) - ‘urgent call for help’, etc.            

     The oldest group of graphical abbreviations in English is of Latin origin. In Russian this type of abbreviation is not typical. In these abbreviations in the spelling Latin words are shortened, while orally the corresponding English equivalents are pronounced in the full form,e.g. for example (Latin exampli gratia), a.m. - in the morning (ante meridiem), No -number (numero), p.a. - a year (per annum), d - penny (dinarius), lb - pound (libra), i. e. - that is (id est) etc.   Some graphical abbreviations of Latin origin have different English equivalents in different contexts, e.g. p.m. can be pronounced «in the afternoon» (post meridiem) and «after death» (post mortem).       There are also graphical abbreviations of native origin, where in the spelling we have abbreviations of words and word-groups of the corresponding English equivalents in the full form. We have several semantic groups of them:  a) days of the week, e.g. Mon - Monday, Tue - Tuesday etc   b) names of months, e.g. Apr - April, Aug - August etc.    c) names of counties in UK, e.g. Yorks - Yorkshire, Berks -Berkshire etc  d) names of states in USA, e.g. Ala - Alabama, Alas - Alaska etc.  e) names of address, e.g. Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. etc.     f) military ranks, e.g. capt. -captain, col. - colonel, sgt - sergeant etc.   g) scientific degrees, e.g. B.A. - Bachelor of Arts, D.M. - Doctor of Medicine . ( Sometimes in scientific degrees we have abbreviations of Latin origin, e.g., M.B. - Medicinae Baccalauras).        h) units of time, length, weight, e.g. f. / ft -foot/feet, sec. - second, in. -inch, mg. -milligram etc.[5]           The reading of some graphical abbreviations depends on the context, e.g. «m» can be read as: male, married, masculine, metre, mile, million, minute, «l.p.» can be read as long-playing, low pressure.       Initialisms are the bordering case between graphical and lexical abbreviations. When they appear in the language, as a rule, to denote some new offices they are closer to graphical abbreviations because orally full forms are used, e.g. J.V. - joint venture. When they are used for some duration of time they acquire the shortened form of pronouncing and become closer to lexical abbreviations, e.g. BBC is as a rule pronounced in the shortened form.

In some cases the translation of initialisms is next to impossible without using special dictionaries. Initialisms are denoted in different ways. Very often they are expressed in the way they are pronounced in the language of their origin, e.g. ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) is given in Russian as АНЗУС, SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) was for a long time used in Russian as COJIT, now a translation variant is used (ОСВ -Договор об ограничении стратегических вооружений). This type of initialisms borrowed into other languages is preferable, e.g. UFO -НЛО, СП-JVetc.      There are three types of initialisms in English:     a) initialisms with alphabetical reading, such as UK, BUP, CND etc   b) initialisms which are read as if they are words, e.g. UNESCO, UNO, NATO etc.            c) initialisms which coincide with English words in their sound form, such initialisms are called acronyms, e.g. CLASS (Computor-based Laboratory for Automated School System).         Some scientists unite groups b) and c) into one group which they call acronyms. Some initialisms can form new words in which they act as root morphemes by different ways of word-building:       a) affixation, e.g. AWALism, ex-rafer, ex- POW, to waafize, AIDSophobia etc.             b) conversion, e.g. to raff, to fly IFR (Instalment Flight Rules),   c) composition, e.g. STOLport, USAFman etc.      d) there are also compound-shortened words where the first component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical reading and the second one is a complete word, e.g. A-bomb, U-pronunciation, V -day etc. in some cases the first component is a complete word and the second component is an initial abbreviation with the alphabetical pronunciation, e.g. Three -Ds (Three dimensions).[6]    Abbreviation of words consists in clipping a part of a word. As a result we get a new lexical unit where either the lexical meaning or the style is different form the full form of the word. In such cases as »fantasy» and «fancy», «fence» and «defence» we have different lexical meanings. In such cases as «laboratory» and «lab» we have different styles.         Abbreviation does not change the part-of-speech meaning, as we have it in the case of conversion or affixation, it produces words belonging to the same part of speech as the primary word, e.g. prof is a noun and professor is also a noun. Mostly nouns undergo abbreviation, but we can also meet abbreviation of verbs, such as to rev from to revolve, to tab from to tabulate etc. But mostly abbreviated forms of verbs are formed by means of conversion from abbreviated nouns, e.g. to taxi, to vac etc. Adjectives can be abbreviated but they are mostly used in school slang and are combined with suffixation, e.g. comfy, dilly, mizzy etc.    Here we can mention a group of words ending in «o», such as disco (dicotheque), expo (exposition), intro (introduction) and many others. On the analogy with these words there developed in Modern English a number of words where «o» is added as a kind of a suffix to the shortened form of the word, e.g. combo (combination) - небольшой эстрадный ансамбль, Afro (African) -прическа под африканца etc. In other cases the beginning of the word is clipped. In such cases we have apheresis e.g. chute (parachute), varsity (university), copter (helicopter), thuse (enthuse) etc. Sometimes the middle of the word is clipped, e.g. mart (market), fanzine (fan magazine) maths (mathematics). Such abbreviations are called syncope. Sometimes we have a combination of apocope with apheresis,when the beginning and the end of the word are clipped, e.g. tec (detective), van (avanguard).          Sometimes shortening influences the spelling of the word, e.g. «c» can be substituted by «k» before «e» to preserve pronunciation, e.g. mike (microphone), Coke (coca-cola) etc. The same rule is observed in the following cases: fax( facsimile), teck (technical college), trank (tranquilizer) etc. The final consonants in the shortened forms are substituded by letters characteristic of native English words.[7]             This comparatively new way of word-building has achieved a high degree of productivity nowadays, especially in American English.      An abbreviation is a short way of writing a word or a phrase that could also be written out in full. So, for example, you might write Dr Kinsey instead of Doctor Kinsey. Here Dr is an abbreviation for the word Doctor.                                     

Abbreviations must be clearly distinguished from contractions. The key difference is that an abbreviation does not normally have a distinctive pronunciation of its own. So, for example, the abbreviation Dr is pronounced just like Doctor, the abbreviation oz is pronounced just like ounce(s) and the abbreviation e.g. is pronounced just like for example. (True, there are a few people who actually say "ee-jee" for the last one, but this practice is decidedly unusual.) A contraction, in contrast, does have its own distinctive pronunciation: for example, the contraction can't is pronounced differently from cannot, and the contraction she's is pronounced differently from she is or she has.       Abbreviations are very rarely used in formal writing. Almost the only ones which are frequently used are the abbreviations for certain common titles, when these are used with someone's name: Mr Willis, Dr Livingstone, Mrs Thatcher, Ms Harmon, St Joan. (Note that the two items Mrs and Ms are conventionally treated as abbreviations, even though they can be written in no other way.) When writing about a French or Spanish person, you may use the abbreviations for the French and Spanish equivalents of the English titles: M. Mitterrand, Sr. González. (These are the usual French and Spanish abbreviations for Monsieur and Señor, equivalent to English Mister.) Observe that each of these abbreviations begins with a capital letter.  Other titles are sometimes abbreviated in the same way: Prof. Chomsky, Sgt. Yorke, Mgr. Lindemann. However, it is usually much better to write these titles out in full when you are using them in a sentence: Professor Chomsky, Sergeant Yorke, Monsignor Lindemann. The abbreviated forms are best confined to places like footnotes and captions of pictures.         Note carefully the use of full stops in these abbreviations. British usage favours omitting the full stop in abbreviations which include the first and last letters of a single word, such as Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr and St; American usage prefers (A) Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. and St., with full stops. Most other abbreviated titles, however, require a full stop, as shown above.        A person's initials are a kind of abbreviation, and these are usually followed by full stops: John D. Rockefeller, C. Aubrey Smith, O. J. Simpson. Increasingly, however, there is a tendency to write such initials without full stops: John D Rockefeller, C Aubrey Smith, O J Simpson. And note the rare special case illustrated by Harry S Truman: the S in this name never takes a full stop, because it's not an abbreviation for anything; President Truman's parents actually gave him the middle name S.            Two other common abbreviations are a.m. (`before noon') and p.m. (`after noon'): 10.00 a.m., six p.m. These are always acceptable. Note that these are not capitalized in British usage (though American usage prefers (A) 10.00 am and six pm, with small capitals and no full stops).        Also usual are the abbreviations b.c. and a.d., usually written in small capitals, for marking dates as before or after the birth of Christ:     According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 b.c.     The emperor Vespasian died in a.d. 79. or       The emperor Vespasian died in 79 a.d.       It is traditional, and recommended, to write a.d. before the date, but nowadays it is often written after.         Non-Christians who do not use the Christian calendar may prefer to use b.c.e. (`before the common era') and c.e. (`of the common era') instead. This is always acceptable:            According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 b.c.e.      The emperor Vespasian died in 79 c.e.       All four of these abbreviations are commonly written in small capitals, and you should follow this practice if you can; if you can't produce small capitals, use full-sized capitals instead. All four of them are also now very frequently written without full stops: 753 bc, ad 79, 753 bce, 79 ce. This reflects the increasing tendency to omit the full stops in abbreviations.        Note also that, when an abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, only one full stop is written. You should never write two full stops in a row.    The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group. They are found not only among formal words but also among colloquialisms and slang. [8]         Many large and well-known organizations and companies have very long names which are commonly abbreviated to a set of initials written in capital letters, usually with no full stops. Here are a few familiar examples:     BBC -British Broadcasting Corporation       ICI -Imperial Chemical Industries         FBI -Federal Bureau of Investigation         RSPCA -Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals    NATO -North Atlantic Treaty Organization        MIT -Massachusetts Institute of Technology       TUC -Trades Union Congress          These and some others are so famous that you can safely use the abbreviated forms without explanation. But don't overdo it , not every reader will recognize IRO as the International Refugee Organization, or IOOF as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (an American social and charitable organization). And, if you're writing for a non-British readership, you'd better not use the abbreviated forms of specifically British institutions, such as the TUC, without explaining them. If you are in doubt, explain the abbreviation the first time you use it. (Note that a few of these were formerly written with full stops, such as R.S.P.C.A., but this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete.)        A few other abbreviations are so well known that you can use them safely in your writing. Every reader will understand what you mean by GCSE examinations (GCSE = General Certificate of Secondary Education), or by DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), or by IQ (intelligence quotient), or by FM radio (FM = frequency modulation). Indeed, in some of these cases, the abbreviated form of the name is far more familiar than the full name.      Otherwise, however, you should try to avoid the use of abbreviations in your formal writing. The frequent use of unnecessary abbreviations will make your text irritating and hard to read. So, you should write four ounces (not 4 oz.), 80 miles per hour (not 80 mph), the Church of England (not the C of E), the seventeenth century (not C17 or the 17th cent.) and the second volume (not the 2nd vol.) It is far more important to make your writing easy to read than to save a few seconds in writing it.  There is one exception to this policy. In scientific writing, the names of units are always abbreviated and always written without full stops or a plural s. If you are doing scientific writing, then, you should conform by writing 5 kg (not 5 kilogrammes, and certainly not 5 kg. or 5 kgs.), 800 Hz (not 800 Hertz) and 17.3 cm3 (not 17.3 cubic centimetres).          There are a number of Latin abbreviations which are sometimes used in English texts. Here are the commonest ones with their English equivalents:   e.g. for example            cf. compare            i.e. in other words            v. consult           viz. namely             etc. and so forth            sc. which means            et al. and other people           ca. Approximately[9]         The rule about using these Latin abbreviations is very simple: don't use them. Their use is only appropriate in special circumstances in which brevity is at a premium, such as in footnotes. It is very poor style to spatter your page with these things, and it could be disastrous to use them without being quite sure what they mean. If you do use one, make sure you punctuate it correctly. Here is an example. The recommended form is this:         Several British universities were founded in the Victorian era; for example, the University of Manchester was established in 1851.       The following version is not wrong, but it is poor style:

Several British universities were founded in the Victorian era; e.g., the University of Manchester was established in 1851.      But this next version is disastrously wrong, because the punctuation has been omitted:           Several British universities were founded in the Victorian era e.g. the University of Manchester was established in 1851.       Using a Latin abbreviation does not relieve you of the obligation of punctuating your sentence. Again, if you avoid Latin abbreviations, you won't get into this sort of trouble.            The abbreviation ca. `approximately' is properly used only in citing a date which is not known exactly, and then usually only if the date is given in parentheses:             The famous Basque cemetery of Argiñeta in Elorrio (ca. ad 883) shows tombs with sun-discs but no crosses.  Roger Bacon (ca. 1214- 1294) was known as "the Admirable Doctor".           Here the use of ca. shows that the date of the cemetery and the date of Bacon's birth are not known exactly. If neither birth date nor death date is known for sure, then each is preceded by ca.          Outside of parentheses, you should usually avoid the use of ca. and prefer an English word like about or approximately: The city of Bilbao was founded in about 1210.Do not write "...in ca. 1210". 

         The abbreviation etc. calls for special comment. It should never be used in careful writing: it is vague and sloppy and, when applied to people, rather offensive. Do not write something like this:                                                                                          Central Africa was explored by Livingstone, Stanley, Brazza, etc.                          Instead, rewrite the sentence in a more explicit way:                                                                  Central Africa was explored by Livingstone, Stanley and Brazza, among others. or                                                                                                                          Central Africa was explored by several Europeans, including Livingstone, Stanley and Brazza.                                                                                                         If you do find yourself using etc., for heaven's sake spell it and punctuate it correctly. This is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase et cetera `and other things', and it is pronounced ET SETRA, and not EK SETRA. Do not write ghastly things like ect. or e.t.c. Such monstrosities make your writing look hopelessly illiterate. Again, if you avoid Latin abbreviations, you won't fall into such traps. [10]                                      Finally, there are two further (and highly objectionable) Latin abbreviations ibid. and op. cit.                                                                                                               Observe that it is usual to write Latin abbreviations in italics, but this is not strictly essential, and many people don't bother.        There has recently been a fashion in some circles for writing Latin abbreviations without full stops, and you may come across things like ie and eg in your reading. I consider this a ghastly practice, and I urge you strongly not to imitate it. (Note, however, that et al. has only one full stop, since et `and' is a complete word in Latin.)           One final point: very many people who should know better use the Latin abbreviation cf., which properly means `compare', merely to refer to published work. It is now very common to see something like this:       The Australian language Dyirbal has a remarkable gender system; cf. Dixon (1972).             This is quite wrong, since the writer is not inviting the reader to compare Dixon's work with anything, but only to consult that work for more information. Hence the correct form is this:

The Australian language Dyirbal has a remarkable gender system; see Dixon (1972).

This widespread blunder is a signal reminder of the danger of using Latin abbreviations when you don't know what they mean. Far too many writers fall into this trap, and write i.e. when they mean e.g., or something equally awful. If you must use a Latin abbreviation, make sure you're using the right one. In most circumstances, though, you are best advised to avoid these abbreviations: almost every one of them has a simple English equivalent which should usually be preferred.