Abbreviations

Source: Microsoft Style Guide

Do not use abbreviations unless they are extremely common. Ask yourself, will the reader know this? Is the feature being called this? When an abbreviation is common, spell out the words of the abbreviation on the first use. Show the abbreviation in parentheses after the spelled-out term.

  • Many technical writing guides will tell you not to alternate between the abbreviation and the spelled-out term in a document.
  • In FAQ documents, treat every occurrence of a term as the first use (that is, spell out the term and show the abbreviation in parentheses on every occurrence).
  • Don’t capitalize the spelled-out term unless it’s a proper name or normally capitalized. 

Common abbreviations

A common abbreviation is either an industry-standard abbreviation or one that is well known to your target audience. Following are some common abbreviations in the computer industry. 

API, ASCII, BIOS, CD, CD-ROM, CGI, CLI, CPU, CSS, DNS, DVD, FAQ, FTP, GB, GHz, GUI, GUID, HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, ID, IMAP, I/O, IP, JSON, KB, kHz, LAN, LDAP, MB, MHz, NIC, NTFS, OLE, OS, PDF, PHP, POP, RAM, REST, ROM, SGML, SMTP, SQL, SSL, TCP, TCP/IP, URI, URL, USB, VLAN, WAN, XML