Effective Use of Abbreviations In APA-Style Scholarly Writing

One of the unique but very important choices you will make as a scholarly writer concerns whether you should abbreviate certain terminology in your writing. A general APA guideline (see Section 4.22 of the 6th edition manual) is that use of abbreviations should be limited. The reason is that use of abbreviations may make passages unclear and even undecipherable for readers who do not know how to interpret them.

However, there is no proscription against using abbreviations in APA. Used appropriately, they may help to improve the flow and clarity of your writing, especially in longer documents such as capstone studies. Today, I want to share some general guidelines for the use of abbreviations in APA. I will share APA’s recommendations for when and when not to abbreviate terminology as well as the organization’s guidelines for how to correctly abbreviate such terminology (please see APA Publication Manual, sixth edition, p. 106-111 for a more extensive discussion).

First, consider the following example from p. 106 of the APA Publication Manual:

• Sentence with abbreviations: “The advantage of the LH was clear from the RT data, which reflected high FP and FN rates for the RH.” 

• Sentence without abbreviations: “The advantage of the left hand was clear from the reaction time data, which reflected high false-positive and false-negative rates for the right hand.”

Use of abbreviations definitely saves space and makes this sentence more compact. However, the sheer number of abbreviations makes the sentence harder to interpret. It would be better for readers, then, to avoid use of these abbreviations and, instead, write out the terms in full in this case.

According to APA, abbreviations should only be used when (a) the reader is already familiar with the abbreviation or (b) a writer can save a considerable amount of space or avoid significant repetition (e.g., in the case of inventories or other instruments with long names). Furthermore, a writer should only use an abbreviation if it will be used at least three times in a document after being introduced. If not, the term should be written out the term in full each time it is used. This guideline is particularly important for writers of long documents, including capstone studies, to consider. Will their readers be able to recall an abbreviation that is not familiar to them and is not used extensively in the document?

Provide the full name for a term that you will abbreviate the first time you use it. Follow with the abbreviation in parentheses. (Use brackets instead of parentheses when introducing an abbreviation inside a parenthetical citation, however.) Then, use the abbreviation throughout the rest of your document. Avoid switching back and forth as this defeats the purpose of using abbreviations and because it can be confusing for readers.

A few abbreviations (e.g., HIV, REM, and IQ) do not need to be introduced (see APA 4.24 for a list). Also, see APA 4.26, 4.27, and 4.28 for helpful guidance on use of Latin abbreviations (e.g., e.g., vs., e.g., and etc.); scientific abbreviations; and statistical abbreviations, respectively. APA 4.23, along with APA 5.12 and 5.16, has helpful information on use of abbreviations in tables and figures.

Lastly, note that abbreviations should not be used in headers, study titles, and reference entries.

Tara Kachgal is a dissertation editor in the Walden University Writing Center. She has a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and teaches for the School of Government's online MPA@UNC program. She resides in Chapel Hill and, in her spare time, serves as a mentor for her local running store's training program.

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