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simple:Abbreviation Abbreviation (from Latin brevis "short"), strictly a shortening; more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent them for the sake of brevity.
Abbreviations, both of single words and of phrases, having a meaning more or less fixed and recognized, are common in ancient writings and inscriptions (see Palaeography and Diplomatic), and very many are in use at the present time. A distinction is to be observed between abbreviations and the contractions that are frequently to be met with in old manuscripts, and even in early printed books, whereby letters are dropped out here and there, or particular collocations of letters represented by somewhat arbitrary symbols. The commonest form of abbreviation is the substitution for a word of its initial letter; but, with a view to prevent ambiguity, one or more of the other letters are frequently added. In some languages, letters are often doubled to indicate a plural or a superlative.
In modern English there are several conventions in use for abbreviations and it may not be clear which one is best. Publishers sometimes express their preferences in a style guide. Some of the questions which may arise:
Upper or lower case letters? If the original word was capitalised, then the first letter of its abbreviation will also be capital, e.g., U.S. for United States. But when abbreviating lower case letters, there is no clear guide.
Usage of periods and space, e.g., US, U.S. or U. S. The period should be added if the abbreviation may be interpreted as a word, but otherwise there is no clear guide. There is no period between letters of the same word, e.g., St. and not S.t. for Saint.
Whether to add an apostrophe for a plural, e.g., kms vs km's. The apostrophe is not needed grammatically but sometimes is added to make it clear that the s is not part of the abbreviation.
In Chinese, abbreviations can be formed by using key characterss. For example, the renmin daibiao dahui (National People's Congress) becomes ren da. Alternatively, there may be a set of classical characters which are shorter and more formal, as in the case of Chinese provinces.
see also:
initialism, list of initialisms, acronym, list of acronyms, apocopation, TLA, Wikipedia disambiguation of abbreviations,
Internet slang, list of computing and IT abbreviations, list of medical abbreviations, list of government and military acronyms, abbreviations used in CIA World Factbook,
ISO language code, ISO country code.