User talk:Ground Zero/auto-abrev

(archived from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles)

Abbreviations and Abbreviation Eradication

The Wikipedia Manual of Style suggests that abbreviations should be spelled out: Wikipedia:MOS#Acronyms_and_abbreviations. There is a single editor that firmly believes that an instance such as this: EPA, is categorically wrong, incorrect, and "in violation" when the first instance in an article. Notice, that EPA is linked to it's full article. The editor contends that the first instance, without exception, can only be correct if addressed like this: United States Environmental Protection Agency or Environmental Protection Agency.

Several other editors have pointed out that this rings false, that it is no imposition on the reader to use the abbreviation + link... while always spelling out the abbreviation can interrupt the flow of the article and give the article an inappropriate, even clumsy emphasis.

Does Project Automobiles have a policy or consensus on this? The discussion here only centers on the use of EPA, but could easily expand to include other abbreviations.

Here is the discussion regarding "Abbreviations and Abbreviation Eradication". 842U (talk) 21:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Based on the manual of style, on plain common sense, and on experience in the field of accessibility I would have to say I entirely support any move to eradicate initialisms, abbreviations, and anything similar on the first use of a term. "CKD" is one which very commonly appears in automotive articles. Even as somebody with a strong interest in the topic, the first time I saw this I had to search to learn that the term means complete knock down. It really needs to be expanded on the first use. I agree that later in the article it can be appropriate to abbreviate to smooth reading; hence the usage of brackets: "British Motor Corporation (BMC)", for example, to prepare the reader for the initialism. But it may be worth spelling out in full more than once if the term appears in disparate sections of the article — especially if these are linked to directly using anchors from some other article.

Another bugbear of mine is inconsistency. A lot of editors use (or fail to correct) "Mk", "Mk.", "MK.", and "MK" interchangeably; some also mix latin and arabic numerals in these cases. This is lazy. It is often a made-up term anyway (and we've had discussions previously about using model years instead). When it really is part of the genuine name of the car, it is almost always really "Mark"... in my opinion, anyway. I recently had a discussion elsewhere with another editor about this. We didn't reach consensus, but I believe that since the manufacturer in question was not consistent (using "Mk", "Mk.", and "Mark" in different places) then they must have simply been presuming that everybody would know it is an abbreviation. On Wikipedia we do not make such presumptions. If it's not clear, explain it. – Kieran T ^(talk) 17:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I would have to agree with avoiding abbreviations. Part of the issue is that articles might be printed in which case a piped link to the full name would no longer help. swaq 18:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I attended a business writing course about 15 years ago that taught us to write the first occurrence of an abbreviation/acronym as the abbreviation/acronym followed by the full expression in parenthesis. E.g. look at all the TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) - avoid too many TLA's. The idea is that the first time the reader sees TLA he thinks "what on earth does that mean" and it sticks in his mind. But the very next thing he reads is the explanation, so that also sticks in his mind. From then on TLA becomes very obvious. Whereas the more common way is to put the full expression first, followed by the abbreviation/acronym in parenthesis. Most readers read the expression and the skip the part in parenthesis completely. So when they come across TLA further down they have to stop and reread the article until they pick up the full expression - in other words, the reader is forced to do extra work. By extension, I would like to see the commonly used short form without the full expression (tempting to say everywhere) with a link to the full term for those that don't know it yet. A reader who is familiar with the term just keeps reading. A reader not familiar with the term follows the link, understands, clicks the back button and continues reading with new knowledge. The underlying assumption is to help the reader, not to add to much verbosity or to confuse them with unexplained terms. Careful linking helps the new reader while letting the experienced reader flow through easier. Even better if we had a way for tool tips to popup when hovering over an unknown acronym/abbreviation, with a link to a full article in the tool tip. Stepho-wrs (talk) 22:09, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Definitely agree! SOFFIA (Spell Out Following First Instance of Abbreviation) is a good bit more reader-friendly and professional than Parenthesizing the Abbreviation Following First Use (PAFFU). If this were to be proposed as a convention, I would strongly support it not only here in the automobiles project, but also in the MOS at large.

It looks as though the <acronym> tag is not supported in Wikipedia, which is not altogether a bad thing. Using it would force readers to use the mouse (or other pointing device), a nuisance. And oftener than not it would probably interfere with the easy and unambiguous linking of the article covering the abbreviated-and-spelt-out item. —Scheinwerfermann ^T·_C00:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Though isn't there a popup feature that does pretty much the same thing?842U (talk) 17:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

<-- (outdent) On the original point, I think the edits are more or less correct. A couple of them showed up in my watchlist, and my only complaint was that rather than a straight swap of acronym for spelled-out words, the sentence might have needed rejigging to improve its readability. Having said that, it was a lousy sentence to start with, so I wasn't going to moan. In general we should indeed be spelling out acronyms on first usage; it's MOS-compliant and more reader-friendly, no doubt about it.

As for "SOFFIA vs PAFFU" (sic)... More reader-friendly? Subjective, but certainly open to discussion. Nevertheless, I'd strongly dispute the assertion that it's more professional to use the former, unless you mean in a "commercial" context as opposed to "the opposite of amateur". Businesses might use this approach if they're trying to reinforce/emphasize an acronymical brand to a reader, but all the major style guides (CMOS, Columbia, AP, Guardian, NYT, BBC, Encarta, Britannica, etc) either explicitly recommend spelling out in full in the first instance with the abbreviation in parentheses, or follow that standard routinely. I've always considered that as a tertiary source, WP should kowtow to others' standards, so I'd be opposed to such a proposal. --DeLarge (talk) 10:17, 18 December 2008 (UTC)