Journo Bites: Acronyms

Surely, you’ve seen headlines like this

and you have wondered, “Wait a minute. Shouldn’t it be UNESCO, and not Unesco?”

Hi! This is Journo Bites, a series of quick journalism tips from yours truly, so that bit by bit, you understand why journalists write and report their stories the way they do. Before I continue my explanation about why we prefer “Unesco” over “UNESCO,” please like RA vs the World on Facebook and visit this page to ask me any question about journalism that has been bugging you.

Now back to that topic.

Let me start by saying that acronyms should generally be avoided in headlines unless they are easily recognizable. In the case above, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is widely known, so that headline is safe. Let’s say there’s another Unesco in town. If ever you want to use the acronym for a new group called Unicorns, Narwhals, and Extraterrestrials Secretly Collaborating on Omnipotence and you write a headline that reads, “Unesco unveils unicorn-powered perpetual machine,” you see the problem here, right? That will make your readers what the other Unesco has been up to all these years.

Another problem arises when acronyms for unfamiliar groups are used. It is better to use a description of what the organization does rather than use the acronym for the group.

In terms of the capitalization in UNESCO vs Unesco, the Associated Press Stylebook says that for acronyms with more than five letters, we only capitalize the first letter. That is why you often see Pagasa instead of PAGASA, Unesco instead of UNESCO, Unicef instead of UNICEF, or Phivolcs instead of PHIVOLCS in many headlines, but you still see DOLE, DOT, and WHO.

There are newspapers that still capitalize all the letters in the acronym, but these are newspapers that have decided to use their own stylesheet instead of following the AP Stylebook. If you want to know more about stylesheet, I can write a separate post about it, but in short, it’s a guide for journalists so that the editing and style are consistent throughout the newspaper or the digital news organization. Some newsrooms do not follow AP Stylebook in terms of the minimum number of letters. That’s all right. Some would do this even when acronyms for organizations are only composed of four letters. That’s all right, too. But ultimately, this decision has to be made by the news organization if they want to be consistent, not by the AP Stylebook. In short, while more newspaper in the world follow the AP style, each newspaper really has its own rule.

Now, what about acronyms such as MDRRMO? Should we use MDRRMO or Mdrrmo? Here’s the rule: If if the acronym is read as a word, we follow the AP Stylebook guideline. If we read the acronym letter by letter as in MDRRMO, LTFRB, or UNHCR, even if they have more than five letters, we just let it scream.

While the AP Stylebook doesn’t offer an explanation for this, it is easy to understand why. Newspapers need to economize space on each page. Writing something in all capital letters would take up more space than needed. In turn, this allows them to give you more information. This practice, therefore, should be ditched by online news organizations since they don’t have to think about saving space. More on that soon.

Thank you very much and please share this post. You can use the buttons below to share this explanation.