1. yagr

    yagr Senior Member

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    Abbreviation help

    Discussion in 'Support & Feedback' started by yagr, Jan 12, 2012.

    Is there a sticky somewhere that has collected various abbreviations or acronyms for those people who are new to writing, to the site, or creative fiction?

    Unfortunately, I'm only able to recall those that I've seen here which I was able to discern, i.e. LOTR for Lord of the Rings, POD for, I'm guessing, Publishing on Demand, etc.

    Any existing help out there?
     
  2. cruciFICTION

    cruciFICTION Contributor Contributor

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    Those aren't abbreviations. 'etc' is an abbreviation for 'et cetera'. LOTR is an initialism for Lord of the Rings.

    However, the answers you seek can be found through moderate use of search-fu. Google the abbreviation. Urban Dictionary or Wikipedia are likely to tell you what it means. You'll learn it soon enough. It's simple stuff if you look at the context.

    WIP is work-in-progress. MS is manuscript. So on, so forth.
     
  3. arron89

    arron89 Banned

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    As cool a word as initialism would be, I think you mean acronym.
     
  4. yagr

    yagr Senior Member

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    Actually, initialism is a word - a cool one. ;) However, I did mean abbreviations and acronyms as well, I simply should have added initialism to the list...didn't know what examples I was going to use when I started. And I'm going to guess that the answer to my question is, 'no, there isn't anything on the site'. Thanks both!
     
  5. cruciFICTION

    cruciFICTION Contributor Contributor

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    Wiki it. There's a whole wikipedia page on initialisms and acronyms. Acronyms are pronounceable. Initialisms are just the letters. You can't pronounce LOTR normally, therefore it is an initialism. WIP, on the other hand, can (like 'whip'), so it can be an acronym.

    We had someone ask a while back about whether we could get a little glossary of terms going, and the general consensus was that while it would be useful, it'd also be unnecessary, given that Google, Wikipedia, and several other online sources can give you the answer very quickly.
     

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