SMM Abbreviations

Use brackets, not commas, to abbreviate. This is a common way to abbreviate (UN, BBC, Reuters).

 Correct: Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) ...

Incorrect: Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, ...

 Use abbreviations without stops: the UN, not the U.N.

 If it is an abbreviation of the name of an organisation, the use of the should be the same as with the full name: ‘the British Broadcasting Corporation’ so ‘the BBC’; ‘the All Progressives Congress’ so ‘the APC’. If there is no 'the' in the full name, don't use it in the abbreviation: Cable News Network, so CNN, not the CNN.

 After the first mention, try not to repeat the abbreviation more than once or twice; so write 'the commission' rather than the INEC, 'the bank' rather than the CBN, to avoid spattering the page with capital letters.

Names only need to have an abbreviation attached in brackets if the abbreviation is going to feature again in the article. There is no point in adding the abbreviation if you are not going to use it or it does not occur in a quotation.

 With very well known organisations, it is permissible to use the full name initially without the abbreviation, even if the abbreviated form is used later; thus: The Peoples Democratic Party has triumphed in ....... The number of seats won by the PDP ... In such cases, the abbreviation can be used initially, as long as the full form is used later.

 When the abbreviation is better known than the full form, use it on its own, so the UN' is fine without the full name, the car is a BMW, not a Bayerische Motoren Werke, but use your judgement as to how meaningful an unexplained abbreviation will be to your readers. Examples include NATO, HIV, Aids, DNA, the CIA, the KGB, FIFA, DVD, CD, AM, PM, Nasa.

 And it is not necessary to attach an abbreviation to every name of an organisation or position: the English Premier League is nowhere known as the EPL; the FIFA World Cup is unrecognisable as FWC or FIFA WC; nobody talks about the BSG, the Borno state government. Only use an abbreviation if it is common parlance: the INEC for the Independent National Election Commission, but not the ACIC for the Abuja Capital International College, or the PPRO (can you guess?) for the Police Public Relations Officer, which is, of course, not correct, as it is a description, not a title, so 'the police public relations officer'.

 Do not abbreviate names of people unless extremely well known to your readers, and then only in headlines: GEJ might be acceptable for readers in Nigeria, but HZJ (Hilaru Zakari Jikantoro) is not.

 See also IDPs.