Bull's Eye Business Writing Tips

Tip #403:  ...common abbreviations...

These FREE weekly business writing tips
will help you improve your business writing.

Tip #403:  The following list of expressions presents common abbreviations acceptable in general usage:

  • A-OK:  very definitely OK

  • GDP:  gross domestic product

  • SOP:  standard operating procedures

  • TLC:  tender, loving care 

  • VIP:  very important person

  • PAC:  public action committee

  • IOU:  I owe you

If you use other abbreviations, please send them for us to see too.

Weekly Exercise:

We receive over 200 emails per day.  We encourage you to answer our weekly tips, but please, if you are answering this weekly tip exercise,  identify the tip number in the subject line of your email.

This week’s quiz:

Choose the correct expression:

  1. CD-ROM or CD-ROM disc
  2. DOS or DOS operating system
  3. ISP or ISP provider
  4. TCP/IP or TCP/IP protocol

Comment on Tip #402:

Carol Pearson commented: 

I believe you need a correction on one of the words in your quiz: the "an" in front of "heroic" is incorrect.  Just because a word starts with the letter "h," one doesn't use the "an" automatically (and newscasters who use the "an historic occasion" construction are WRONG).

The "an" should be used with a word beginning with "h" ONLY if the "h" sound is silent-- i.e., "an honorable discharge," or  "an honest person," but "a historic event" or "a heroic person."

My comments to Carol: 

I agree.  Thanks for your comments about “an historic occasion” or ‘a historic occasion.”  According to The Gregg Reference Manual, both are correct in speech, depending on whether the “h” is sounded or left silent.  In writing “a historic occasion” is the form more commonly used form.

Quote of the week:

“It’s strange that words are so inadequate.  Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”  (T. S. Eliot, British author)

Answers to this week's quiz:

  1. CD-ROM
  2. DOS
  3. ISP
  4. TCP/IP

To send the above exercise answers to Gloria for her comments and review,  copy the questions,  paste  them into an email, answer them,  and send to Marsha@basic-learning.com.

 

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By Gloria Pincu, M.A. , President of Basic Learning Systems, Inc.
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Here are some books on business writing that I recommend.

Bull's Eye Business Writing is also available from Amazon.com.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, author, Lynne Truss The Everything Resume Book by Steven Graber
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , by William Knowlton Zinsser  The Gregg Reference Manual, by William A. Sabin 
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, White, E. B. White  How to Take the Fog Out of Business Writing, by Robert Gunning, Richard A. Kallan (Contributor) 

More books on business writing and other business subjects  (available from Amazon.com). 

Contact Gloria Pincu at Basic Learning Systems, Inc.

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