Word meanings and abbreviations: meaning and use

Reviewed by Benjamin Lohrer, editor at corrected.eu · Last updated: 3 September 2026

From academic terms to digital short forms

This overview explains abbreviations compactly: the types, when to use a full stop, how plurals work and which abbreviations turn up most often in academic writing, each with meaning and use. A short section at the end covers the German abbreviations you meet most often.

What word meanings and abbreviations do for your studies

Whether in a seminar, in a bachelor thesis or in a chat with fellow students, words and abbreviations keep turning up whose exact meaning stays unclear. Anyone who knows the meaning of a term uses it precisely and avoids misunderstandings. Anyone who resolves an abbreviation correctly comes across as confident in communication. Precision matters most in academic texts.

Types of abbreviation

In English, "abbreviation" is the general term. Several kinds can be told apart, and the kind decides how the abbreviation is punctuated and pronounced.

Full stops, spacing and plurals

• British usage: no full stop after a contraction that ends in the last letter of the word: Dr, Mr, Mrs, St, Ltd. A shortened word that stops before the end takes a full stop: Prof., approx., etc.
• Initialisms and acronyms: no full stops: EU, UNESCO, PhD.
• Plurals: add a lower-case s without an apostrophe: CDs, PhDs, the 1990s. CD's is wrong.
• End of a sentence: if a sentence ends in an abbreviation that takes a full stop, that full stop also closes the sentence. Do not add a second one.
• First use: write the long form first and put the abbreviation in brackets: Graduate Record Examination (GRE). After that, the abbreviation is enough. If a text has many abbreviations, add a list of abbreviations near the front.
• Avoid piling them up: many abbreviations in one sentence make it hard to read. Spell some of them out in running text.

Common abbreviations in academic writing

These abbreviations come up constantly in theses and journal articles. The Latin ones are best used in footnotes, brackets and reference lists rather than in running text.

Following the style guide your university prescribes matters more than any single rule above. Where the guide is silent, pick one form and use it throughout. The same goes for punctuation: e.g. and i.e. are written with full stops in most British guides, and they are usually followed by a comma in American usage.

How to look an abbreviation up

1. Check the context: in a text on medicine, "MS" can mean multiple sclerosis, in a university setting a master's degree.
2. Look for a list of abbreviations near the front of the document or define the term at first use.
3. Use a specialist dictionary of abbreviations for the field, and avoid guessing.
4. Decide whether the abbreviation fits the register. In formal writing, many chat abbreviations such as btw or asap are out of place.

German abbreviations you will meet

German texts use abbreviations that look like the Latin ones above but have their own forms. German also separates the parts of a multi-part abbreviation with a space: z. B., not z.B.

The German rule for pluralising abbreviations is the same as in English: no apostrophe. CDs is correct, CD's is not. Units of measurement such as km, kg and the symbol € are symbols, not abbreviations, and carry no full stop in either language.

Related pages

For the meaning of more terms, see word meanings, synonyms and spelling, grammar and punctuation. For a final check of your text before submission, see proofreading and editing.