Pronounciation of abbreviations

[Warren_Paul]

As I write my novel, I've had this curious thought about how the reader pronounces abbreviations in dialogue and narrative.

For instance, in the following two sentences I've extracted from my book, do you read it as one word or pronounce each letter separately?

#1: ‘It’s security footage from E.S.P.A Labs Omega Confinement.’

#2: E.S.P.A didn’t have dropships back then, but the throbbing sound of the propellers was just as frightening


And another thought, does the period between each letter influence your pronunciation? If I wanted the second example to be pronounced as one word, do you think I should remove the periods and just have it all caps or is it fine as is?

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I briefly see it as the letters, and almost immediately start saying it as "espa". I don't think the periods make any difference -- as long as it's pronounceable and appears often, I will get lazy very quickly and see it as a word. I imagine the people in the story, dealing with the letters, will do the same.

 

[tinkerdan]

With the periods I struggle between reading it as E-S-P-A and just ESPA. If its an acronym I'd expect it to be just ESPA. It actually does seem to qualify for that. Though it is clear that an acronym is just another form of abbreviation.
In the acronym form I'd pronounce it 'espa' where in an E.S.P.A. (I'm not sure but I think you need another period after the A.) I would pronounce this e es pe ay or something like that.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Oh right, acronym. That's the word I wanted. My mind went blank when creating the thread and I ended up with abbreviation.

Yeah, it stands for Extra Sensory Protection Agency. E.S.P.A is definitely an acronym.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

When an acronym is pronounced as one word, it is almost always styled without full stops between the letters, to avoid confusion with those words where each letter is pronounced separately. (Note, words like FBI and ESP which are pronounced as separate letters are losing their full stops. But that only adds to the confusion, so I think we should ignore the silly things* for purposes of this discussion.) With the full stops, I think at least half your readers will pronounce each letter instead of pronouncing ESPA all as one word. Without the full stops, I think almost every reader will see one word. So it depends on what you want.

Then there are some acronyms, like Sonar and Radar, which only capitalize the first letter. If you want readers to think Espa, then you might consider spelling it that way.

____
*How would one pronounce FBI as a word, anyway. Fibee? Not exactly a name to put fear into the hearts of those who would break our federal laws!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Sonar and Radar, which only capitalize the first letter.

Also Laser and Maser (please never a Z!). But they used to be all caps. Pronounceable acronyms quickly become words.
Some made up stuff looks like it might be an acronym and is often incorrectly capitalised such as the Twain Image/Scanner driver software layer.
If an acronym is never pronounced as a word, then put in E.S.P.A., if it could be pronounced by many of the characters in the story, then put it as ESPA, or even Espa. I think you can only leave out stops on acronyms that are either well known and often done like that or if it's usually pronounced as a word.

TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations) are often unpronounceable and often written without stops, as are often two letters
GBP (Great Britain Pound, official abbreviation for Sterling.)
USA, UAE, GB, UK
But IRL is abbreviation of single word. In the past single word abbreviations had a stop, e.g. etc. for etcetera and other things.
Stops seem to be increasingly left out except to mark end of a sentence.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Thanks everyone. It's probably best to write it as ESPA then, but when I tried that it just seems weird, like it doesn't fit in the narrative. Maybe it's just me.

 

[Ursa major]

Just a minor point.

You can subtly indicate how some abbreviations should be pronounced, in particular those where the leading letter, when said on its own, starts with a vowel even though the letter itself is a consonant. Examples are: F (ef), L (el), M (em), N (en), R (ar), S (es) X (ex). H (aitch) is a special case**.

When mentioning such an abbreviation, you can precede it with the indefinite article. This means that when we read 'a SMERSH agent', we are given a clue that it's to be read as a word, because it isn't preceded by an 'an'. Similarly, if we read about 'an MOD spokesman', we know that MOD is not meant to be pronounced as one word.

(Note that this observation is not simply an indication of a high degree of nerdiness. When one has had to write countless documents that include Intelligent Network abbreviations -- SCP, SCF, SSP, SSF, SDP, SDF, MP, SMF, SCE, SRF... -- one cannot avoid noticing such things.)


** - The use of the indefinite article with words beginning with H is a subject on its own, even without worrying about abbreviations starting with H.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Some parts of UK they don't have an H.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Just a minor point.
...
When mentioning such an abbreviation, you can precede it with the indefinite article. This means that when we read 'a SMERSH agent', we are given a clue that it's to be read as a word, because it isn't preceded by an 'an'. Similarly, if we read about 'an MOD spokesman', we know that MOD is not meant to be pronounced as one word.

Oh. Might think it's a minor point, but that's such a useful tip! Thanks.

 

[Ursa major]

Some parts of UK they don't have an H.

Then you need to make... er... special preparations when you meet one, as you're entering a whole new world of pain.

 

[ralphkern]

I'm in a job where we love our acronyms. Generally, ones that can be pronounced as a word are vocalised as such. For example CIT is said as 'sit'. CAPT as how you'd expect. Other ones that are not so natural tend to just have the letters pronounced. For example CPMG.

 

[Venusian Broon]

And even when you can't pronounce it as a word, sometimes it just rolls of the tongue.

Decades ago when I last had to go to, what is now, the department of works and pension it used to be called the department of social security.

Or DSS, which I tended to emphasis the 'SS' at the end when speaking. 'cause the place seemed to be full of ****ing nazis at the time . At least the specific ones trying to make my life a misery.

 

[Ursa major]

Should you really be dissing those DSS staff...?

​

DSS -- pronounced as three separate letters -- reminds me of the Digital Switching Subsystem, which then brings up memories of DSSS -- "D triple S" -- which was the Digital Subscriber Switching Subsystem; to me, this always begged the question of who these digital subscribers might be. (We never even got so much as a thumbnail sketch of them....)

 

[Venusian Broon]

Should you really be dissing those DSS staff...?

​

Not anymore, I am sure they are all lovely and prepossessing. It probably was just a bad egg in the houssing department in Cambridge in 1997.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

who these digital subscribers might be

Early AIs presumably.

 

[Ursa major]

Never has that Parliamentary phrase been as chilling: "The AIs have it, the AIs have it...."


(Just another way of showing how we might guess whether to pronounce an abbreviation or its individual letters. Not a cheap pun, honest! )

 

[hopewrites]

I try to read abbreviations and acronyms as their original phrase, unless I'm given to understand that they prefer to go by the word their acronym makes (Or abbreviation as the case may be).

When I see bumper-stickers for MADD I read "mothers against drunk driving" or "mad" as the phrase demands.
The first time my son read FBI he pronounced it "phoebe"
When watching Avengers I appreciated that the long name I couldnt remember was shortened to SHIELD which I could remember.

I think this is my own personal oddity though, when in school and they told us to remember how to do the equation by thinking FOIL my brain went to aluminum foil, then using a rapier to slash the equation into submission, then to "nono silly it stands for something"... "stands for what?" eventually I gave up and just remembered with a mental color map that lit up in the correct parings.

When someone types AFK I read "I'm away from my keyboard. Dont expect an answer if you keep talking." KK I read "oh all right" or "that sounds good." BRB "Hang on, I'll be back in a sec." ROFLMAO I now hear the "rofelmao song" which of course makes me laugh.

 

[J Riff]

Funny, never thought about it. Huh. AN LSD trip, even thought 'a' makes more sense. So it becomes a thing, Mr. acronym does.
Still, on the cover of this book it says the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I still can't remember what it stands for.

 

[tinkerdan]

United Network Command for Law and Enforcement

Funny, never thought about it. Huh. AN LSD trip, even thought 'a' makes more sense. So it becomes a thing, Mr. acronym does.
Still, on the cover of this book it says the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and I still can't remember what it stands for.

Wiki-pedia
We can remember it for you.