ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

Exercise 

What is the full form of the words below?

1. wasn't 

2. DVD

3. advert

4. RAM

Answers 

1. was not. Some people see wasn't as a single word while others see it as two. The apostrophe replaces the letters that have been missed out.

2. Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc. Many abbreviations like this have completely replaced their full forms in English. They are used commonly when the full form is perhaps too 'technical' or too long to be easily remembered and/or used by the general public, e.g. CD (compact disc).

3. advertisement. Advert is often shortened even more to ad. It is very common in English to shorten words with a lot of syllables to make them easier and faster to say or write. 

4. Random Access Memory (a computer term). It is pronounced as 'ram'.

     The types of abbreviations (short forms of words) in the list above are common in English and are used in both speaking and writing. Wasn't is a contraction, i.e. a shorter form of two words which have been joined together, with an apostrophe replacing any letters that have been missed out. Contractions are perhaps more common in speaking and are associated with an informal register. Some abbreviations (e.g. DVD and RAM) are used so commonly that they have replaced the full form and many people do not know what the full form is.

     Some are used more in certain varieties of English. For example, advert is perhaps more common in British than American English. Abbreviations such as RAM, which are made from the first letters of the full term but are pronounced as single words, are called acronyms. Acronyms are commonly used for governmental and (semi-)political organizations (e.g. UNESCO). Abbreviations such as DVD, in which the letters are pronounced separately, are called initialisms. A good dictionary will normally list abbreviations as items on their own rather than, or as well as, under their full form.