Abbreviation
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dpbsmith (talk | contribs) at 14:44, March 25, 2007. It may differ significantly from current revision.
Initialisms are a form of abbreviation in which a phrase is abbreviated to the first letter of each word in the phrase; familiar examples include
- FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation
- CBS for Columbia Broadcasting System
- KJV for King James Version.
They are distinguished from acronyms in that initialisms are pronounced as individual letters, while acronyms are pronounced as if the letters spelled out a word (which they may in some cases do). (The use of the word "acronym" to include initialisms as well as acronyms is imprecise, but increasingly accepted).