Acronym Vs Initialism: All You Want to Know

We examine acronyms and initialisms in-depth in this blog post, emphasizing the differences between them.

The main difference between acronym and initialism is that an acronym can be pronounced as if it is a word whereas initialism can’t be read or pronounced as a word itself.

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What Are Acronyms and Initialisms?

A term’s shortened form is known as an abbreviation. But there are many types of abbreviations, two of which are acronyms and initialisms. Both terms refer to abbreviations composed of a group of capital letters rather than a shortened word, such as, Mrs.)

Since an acronym can be (and often is) pronounced as a single word, as opposed to an initialism, which is pronounced as a string of letters, this is the main distinction between the two types of terms. Examples of both are shown in the table below.

Rarely, an acronym may contain both acronymic and initialist components (for example,, JPEG), but the emphasis of this post is on acronyms and initialisms as separate concepts.

Introducing Acronyms and Initialisms

Unless it is common or certain to be recognized by the reader, you should always introduce an abbreviation in full the first time it is used, whether it is an acronym or an initialism. Since TV for television is so common, it doesn’t need to be spelled out, whereas this means that magnetic-ink character recognition (MICR) should be spelled out in full as it is here.

If the term being abbreviated is clear to you, as a proofreader, you can either change it in the text or leave a note instructing the client to use the term in full with the abbreviation in brackets.

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Summary: The Difference Between Acronyms and Initialisms

Utilizing the first letter of each word in a phrase, acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations. Acronyms, however, are pronounced like words (e.g., PIN), whereas initialisms can’t be easily pronounced as words and are instead spoken as a list of letters (e.g., DVD).

Unless your style manual specifies otherwise, both of these abbreviations are typically written in capital letters without punctuation. Be aware that some acronyms are now considered to be regular words (e.g., scuba, gif, and radar).

We hope that you feel more comfortable using acronyms and initialisms in your writing after reading this post. Our proofreaders are only a few clicks away if you’d like an expert to ensure that your writing has perfect grammar and spelling. Why not ask how we can help by sending us 500 words for free?