I have a client who works at the FDA. Except that she would edit that sentence to read, “I have a client who works at FDA.”
The difference? I say “the FDA”; she says “FDA.”
To decide which is better, try this: If you spell out “FDA,” which phrase sounds better?
1. “Works at the Food and Drug Administration.”
2. “Works at Food and Drug Administration.”
It’s not even close. #2 sounds awkward, whereas #1 sounds natural.
And yet, a different colleague tells me this issue isn’t that simple. According to Paul, using or not using the definite article (“the”) isn’t a hard-and-fast rule you can apply across the board. His advice: Use “the” before an initialism (e.g., the DoD, the NSA), but drop the “the” before an acronym (e.g., NASA, NIST).
On its face, this guideline seems reasonable. Yet the more I ponder it, the more I remain unsatisfied. In my view, the distinction isn’t between abbreviations and initialisms; it’s a matter of plain English. Just spell-out the sentence, as we did earlier with the FDA, and the answer will emerge clearly.
That’s because the absence of “the” (“works at Food and Drug Administration”) is distracting. It makes the listener pause because it makes the speaker sound like he’s still learning English.
If only the debate ended here.
But Paul then turned to another expert, John, who pointed to a different trick: Use “the” when you pronounce the letters (e.g., the FBI, pronounced “eff bee igh”; or the FDA, pronounced “eff dee ay”), but drop the “the” when you pronounce the abbreviation (e.g., NASA, pronounced “na suh”; NIST).
Got that? Letters vs. abbreviations.
John concluded by referencing a quintessential quirk of the English language:
“There may be some exceptions to this rule. For example, no one would say, ‘He went to the MIT.’”
Don’t you just love language?
Is It “The DoD,” or Just “DoD”?
Abbreviations Have Nothing to Do With Informality
Wise counsel from Richard Lauchman, author of Punctuation at Work: Simple Principles for Achieving Clarity and Good Style:
Abbreviate for Clarity, Not As a Rule
Many people say (because someone once said it to them) that abbreviations of any sort make your writing informal. Such a remark doesn’t get us anywhere; it merely opens the door to endless philosophical debate. And there is never a victor in a conflict about “formality” because definitions vary wildly.
What we want is writing that fits the occasion and the readership — and whether it’s “formal” or “informal” by any individual’s definition should not be a concern. Our primary concern should be clarity; the next should be economy.
Because documents vary in their conventions of style, commandments such as “It’s always best to avoid abbreviations” and “It’s always best to abbreviate” are equally oversimplified. If I were you, I wouldn’t get caught up in considerations of formality when I’m trying to decide whether to abbreviate. I encourage you to behave practically. Abbreviate when doing so would not distract, when the abbreviated form is what the reader is used to, and when the abbreviation would save the reader time.
For Example
When the abbreviation is what we’re used to, the spelled-out version can be puzzling. Many people who have never heard of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have a good sense of what OSHA does. Isn’t it true that IBM is more familiar to you than International Business Machines Corporation? Isn't it true that NASA makes sense to you more quickly than National Aeronautics and Space Administration? Formality is not the concern here. Clarity is.
We conventionally use a.m. and p.m., for example, and if someone actually wrote six ante meridiem or four post meridiem, we would have to ponder the meaning — and then we would wonder what was wrong with him.
Don't Spell-Out What You Can Abbreviate
Amateur writers tend to look down upon abbreviations. They think that spelling out a word — say, “information” rather than “info” — is professional, whereas abbreviating is overly casual.
But pretentiousness does not equal polish. In fact, the opposite is often true. And when the full word is several syllables longer than its counterpart — say, “specifications” (five syllables) vs. “specs” (one) — succinctness beats stiffness. Not as an absolute rule, but in general.
Incidentally, the same principle holds true for contractions (“it’s” rather than “it is”; “I have” rather than “I’ve”).
Here’s a list of words for which we should err on the side of abbreviation:
1. info (information)
2. specs (specifications)
3. stats (statistics)
4. execs (executives)
5. memo (memorandum)
Addendum (8/16/2010):
6. recap (recapitulate)
Addendum (6/6/2011):
7. sync (synchronization)
Addendum (11/18/2014):
8. tech (technician)
9. fed (federal employee)
10. condo (condominium)
11. net (Internet)
12. gym (gymnasium)
13. lab (laboratory)
14. email (electronic mail message)
15. rep (representative)
Addendum (12/1/2014):
16. grad school (graduate school)
Addendum (12/9/2014):
17. math (mathematics)
18. econ (economics)
Addendum (6/11/2015):
19. demo (demonstrate)