Page 189 - How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 8th Edition 8th Edition

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Chapter 34
How and When to Use Abbreviations

Authors who use abbreviations extravagantly need to be restrained.
—Maeve O'Connor

General Principles

Many experienced editors loathe abbreviations. Some editors would prefer that they not be used at all, except for
standard units of measurement and their Système International (SI) prefixes, abbreviations for which are allowed in all
journals. Most journals also allow, without definition, such standard abbreviations as etc., et al., i.e., and e.g. (The
abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are often misused; properly used, i.e. means "that is," whereas e.g. means "for example.") In
your own writing, you would be wise to keep abbreviations to a minimum. The editor will look more kindly on your
paper, and the readers of your paper will bless you forever. More preaching on this point should not be necessary
because, by now, you yourself have no doubt come across undefined and indecipherable abbreviations in the literature.
Just remember how annoyed you felt when you were faced with these conundrums, and join with me now in a vow
never again to pollute the scientific literature with an undefined abbreviation.

The "how to" of using abbreviations is easy, because most journals use the same convention. When you plan to use an
abbreviation, you

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introduce it by spelling out the word or term first, followed by the abbreviation within parentheses. The first sentence
of the Introduction of a paper might read: "Bacterial plasmids, as autonomously replicating deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) molecules of modest size, are promising models for studying DNA replication and its control."

The "when to" of using abbreviations is much more difficult. Several general guidelines might be helpful.

First, never use an abbreviation in the title of an article. Very few journals allow abbreviations in titles, and their use
is strongly discouraged by the indexing and abstracting services. If the abbreviation is not a standard one, the literature
retrieval services will have a difficult or impossible problem. Even if the abbreviation is standard, indexing and other
problems arise. One major problem is that accepted abbreviations have a habit of changing; today's abbreviations may
be unrecognizable a few years from today. Comparison of certain abbreviations as listed in the various editions of the
Council of Biology Editors Style Manual emphasizes this point. Dramatic changes occur when the terminology itself
changes. Students today could have trouble with the abbreviation "DPN" (which stands for "diphosphopyridine
nucleotide"), because the name itself has changed to "nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide," the abbreviation for which
is "NAD.''
Abbreviations should almost never be used in the Abstract. Only if you use the same name, a long one, quite a number
of times should you consider an abbreviation. If you use an abbreviation, you must define it at the first use in the
Abstract. Remember that the Abstract will stand alone in whichever abstracting publications cover the journal in
which your paper appears.
In the text itself, abbreviations may be used. They serve a purpose in reducing printing costs, by somewhat shortening
the paper. More importantly, they aid the reader when they are used judiciously. Having just written the word
"importantly," I am reminded that my children sometimes refer to me as "the FIP" (fairly important person). They
know that I haven't yet made it to VIP.

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