Academic writing can be a bit… wordy. As such, anything that makes your work more concise is usually welcome. Perhaps that’s why abbreviations are so common in essays!
But if you’re going to use abbreviations in your writing, you need to do it right. To help you out with this, we’ve prepared a quick guide to using abbreviations in academic work.
Some of the most common abbreviations are acronyms and initialisms. These are made up of the initial letters in a phrase. For instance:
AWOL = Away Without Official Leave
FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigation
Technically, acronyms are pronounced as a single word, whereas the letters in initialisms are pronounced separately. Despite this, you’ll often see the term ‘acronym’ applied to initialisms.
The key to using these in academic writing is introducing them on the first use. This is done by giving the abbreviation in brackets after the full term, such as in the following:
Hugh Jackman went to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), passing up a role in Neighbours to study full time. WAAPA’s other alumni…
After an acronym or initialism has been defined like this, it can be used in place of the full term.
Academic writing uses a lot of Latin abbreviations. Some of these are common in everyday life, such as ‘e.g.’ (short for exempli gratia) and i.e. (short for id est). But others are more specific.
The terms ‘et al.’ and ‘ibid.’, for instance, are among several Latin abbreviations used in referencing. Your university style guide should set out whether (and how) you need to use these words when citing sources in an essay.
Abbreviations of titles, measurements and dates are also common. For instance:
Term Type
Abbreviated When…
Titles (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr)
Used before a name
Measurements (e.g. cm, Kg)
Used in technical or scientific work; reporting results
Days and Months (e.g. Sept.)
Used in informal writing or when not part of a sentence
In situations other than those noted above, it is usually best to write out these terms in full. Remember to check your style guide if you’re not sure.
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Some abbreviated terms are followed by a full stop, but the rules for this can seem confusing.
In Australian English, we add a full stop when an abbreviation only includes the first part of a word (e.g. writing ‘Prof.’ instead of ‘Professor’). If an abbreviation ends in the same letter as the full word, however, no full stop is required (e.g. using ‘Dr’ instead of ‘Doctor’).
Contractions (e.g. writing ‘isn’t’ instead of ‘is not’) are common in everyday language. However, they are informal, so they should not be used in academic writing!
Finally, if you use a lot of abbreviations in your work, you may want to add a list of abbreviations near the start of your document. This is especially common in theses and dissertations, as these are likely to contain many acronyms and other abbreviated terms.
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