document_title: Acronym

question_text: using the first letter of each word to create a word

question_tokens: using the first letter of each word to create a word

text: Acronym

text: Nomenclature[edit]

text: Whereas an abbreviation may be any type of shortened form, such as words with the middle omitted (for example, Rd for road or Dr for Doctor), an acronym is a word formed from the first letter or first few letters of each word in a phrase (such as sonar, created from sound navigation and ranging). Attestations for Akronym in German are known from 1921, and for acronym in English from 1940.[1]

text:
Although the word acronym is often used to refer to any abbreviation formed from initial letters,[2] some dictionaries and usage commentators define acronym to mean an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word,[18] in contrast to an initialism (or alphabetism)—an abbreviation formed from a string of initials (and possibly pronounced as individual letters).[19]
Some dictionaries include additional senses equating acronym with initialism.[20][21][22] The distinction, when made, hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word or as a string of individual letters. Examples in reference works that make the distinction include NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/, scuba /ˈskuːbə/, and radar /ˈreɪdɑːr/ for acronyms; and FBI /ˌɛfˌbiːˈaɪ/, CRT /ˌsiːˌɑːrˈtiː/, and HTML /ˌeɪtʃˌtiːˌɛmˈɛl/ for initialisms.[3][15][23][24] The rest of this article uses acronym for both types of abbreviation.

text: The distinction is not well-maintained. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:[2] "A number of commentators ... believe that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not. ... Initialism, an older word than acronym, seems to be too little known to the general public to serve as the customary term standing in contrast with acronym in a narrow sense."  About the use of acronym to only mean those pronounced as words, Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd ed.) states:[25] "The limitations of the term being not widely known to the general public, acronym is also often applied to abbreviations that are familiar but are not pronounceable as words. ... Such terms are also called initialisms."

text: A clearer distinction has also been drawn, by Pyles & Algeo (1970),[2] who divided acronyms as a general category into word acronyms pronounced as words, and initialisms sounded out as letters.

text: There is no special term for abbreviations whose pronunciation involves the combination of letter names and words or word-like pronunciations of strings of letters, such as JPEG /ˈdʒeɪpɛɡ/ and MS-DOS /ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/.  There is also some disagreement as to what to call abbreviations that some speakers pronounce as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the terms URL and IRA can be pronounced as individual letters: /ˌjuːˌɑːrˈɛl/ and /ˌaɪˌɑːrˈeɪ/, respectively; or as a single word: /ɜːrl/ and /ˈaɪrə/, respectively.[citation needed]

text: The spelled-out form of an acronym or initialism (that is, what it stands for) is called its expansion.

text: Comparing a few examples of each type[edit]

text:
Pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Scuba: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
Laser: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
GIF: Graphics Interchange Format
Pronounced as a word, containing a mixture of initial and non-initial letters
Amphetamine: alpha-methylphenethylamine
Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei ('secret state police')
Radar: radio detection and ranging
Pronounced as a string of letters, containing syllable-initial but not necessarily word-initial letters
PMN: polymorphonuclear leukocytes
OCA: oculocutaneous albinism
PCM: paracoccidioidomycosis
Pronounced as a word or as a string of letters, depending on speaker or context
FAQ: ([fæk] or ef-a-cue) frequently asked questions
IRA: When used for Individual Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters (i-ar-a) or as a word [ˈaɪrə].
SQL: ([siːkwəl] or ess-cue-el) Structured Query Language.
Pronounced as a combination of spelling out and a word
CD-ROM: (cee-dee-[rɒm]) Compact Disc read-only memory
IUPAC: (i-u-[pæk] or i-u-pee-a-cee) International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
JPEG: (jay-[pɛɡ] or jay-pee-e-gee) Joint Photographic Experts Group
SFMOMA: (ess-ef-[moʊmə] or ess-ef-em-o-em-a) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Pronounced only as a string of letters
BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation
OEM: original equipment manufacturer
USA: United States of America
Pronounced as a string of letters, but with a shortcut
AAA:
(triple-A) American Automobile Association; abdominal aortic aneurysm; anti-aircraft artillery; Asistencia, Asesoría y Administración
(three-As) Amateur Athletic Association
IEEE: (I triple-E) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
NAACP: (N double-A C P or N A A C P) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NCAA: (N C double-A or N C two-A or N C A A) National Collegiate Athletic Association
Shortcut incorporated into name
3M: (three M) originally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
(ISC)²: (ISC squared) International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium[26]
W3C: (W-three C) World Wide Web Consortium
C4ISTAR: (C-four Istar) Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance[27]
Multi-layered acronyms
AIM: AOL Instant Messenger
NAC Breda: (Dutch football club) NOAD ADVENDO Combinatie ("NOAD ADVENDO Combination"),formed by the 1912 merger of two clubs from Breda:
NOAD(Nooit Opgeven Altijd Doorgaan "Never give up, always persevere")
ADVENDO(Aangenaam Door Vermaak En Nuttig Door Ontspanning "Pleasant by entertainment and useful by relaxation")[28][29]
GAIM (former name of Pidgin): GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger
GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program
VHDL: VHSIC hardware description language, where VHSIC stands for very-high-speed integrated circuit.
Recursive acronyms, in which the abbreviation refers to itself
GNU: GNU's not Unix!
Wine: Wine is not an emulator (originally, Windows emulator)
These may go through multiple layers before the self-reference is found:
HURD: HIRD of Unix-replacing daemons, where "HIRD" stands for "HURD of interfaces representing depth"
Pseudo-acronyms, which consist of a sequence of characters that, when pronounced as intended, invoke other, longer words with less typing.[30] This makes them gramograms.
BBQ: bee-bee-cue, for "barbecue".
CQ: cee-cue for "seek you", a code used by radio operators
IOU: i-o-u for "I owe you" (the true acronym would be IOY)
K9: kay-nine for "canine", used to designate police units utilizing dogs
Abbreviations whose last abbreviated word is often redundantly included anyway
ATM machine: automated teller machine (machine)
HIV virus: human immunodeficiency virus (virus)
LCD display: liquid crystal display (display)
PIN number: personal identification number (number)
Pronounced as a word, containing letters as a word in itself
PAYGO: pay-as-you-go

tag: ul

text: Historical and current use[edit]

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tag: table

text: Acronymy, like retronymy, is a linguistic process that has existed throughout history but for which there was little to no naming, conscious attention, or systematic analysis until relatively recent times. Like retronymy, it became much more common in the 20th century than it had formerly been.

text: Ancient examples of acronymy (regardless of whether there was metalanguage at the time to describe it) include the following:

text:
Acronyms were used in Rome before the Christian era. For example, the official name for the Roman Empire, and the Republic before it, was abbreviated as SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus). Inscriptions dating from antiquity, both on stone and on coins, use a lot of abbreviations and acronyms to save room and work. For example, Roman first names, of which there was only a small set, were almost always abbreviated. Common terms were abbreviated too, such as writing just "F" for filius, meaning "son of", a very common part of memorial inscriptions mentioning people. Grammatical markers were abbreviated or left out entirely if they could be inferred from the rest of the text.
So-called nomina sacra were used in many Greek biblical manuscripts. The common words "God" (Θεός), "Jesus" (Ιησούς), "Christ" (Χριστός), and some others, would be abbreviated by their first and last letters, marked with an overline. This was just one of many kinds of conventional scribal abbreviation, used to reduce the time-consuming workload of the scribe and save on valuable writing materials. The same convention is still commonly used in the inscriptions on religious icons and the stamps used to mark the eucharistic bread in Eastern Churches.
The early Christians in Rome, most of whom were Greek rather than Latin speakers, used the image of a fish as a symbol for Jesus in part because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ichthys (ΙΧΘΥΣ), which was said to stand for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ (Iesous CHristos THeou hUios Soter: "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior"). This interpretation dates from the 2nd and 3rd centuries and is preserved in the catacombs of Rome. And for centuries, the Church has used the inscription INRI over the crucifix, which stands for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews").
The Hebrew language has a long history of formation of acronyms pronounced as words, stretching back many centuries. The Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") is known as "Tanakh", an acronym composed from the Hebrew initial letters of its three major sections: Torah (five books of Moses), Nevi'im (prophets), and K'tuvim (writings). Many rabbinical figures from the Middle Ages onward are referred to in rabbinical literature by their pronounced acronyms, such as Rambam and Rashi from the initial letters of their full Hebrew names: Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon and Rabbi Shlomo Yitzkhaki.

text: During the mid- to late-19th century, an acronym-disseminating trend spread through the American and European business communities: abbreviating corporation names in places where space was limited for writing—such as on the sides of railroad cars (e.g., Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad → RF&P); on the sides of barrels and crates; and on ticker tape and in the small-print newspaper stock listings that got their data from it (e.g., American Telephone and Telegraph Company → AT&T). Some well-known commercial examples dating from the 1890s through 1920s include Nabisco (National Biscuit Company),[31] Esso (from S.O., from Standard Oil), and Sunoco (Sun Oil Company).

text: Another driver for the adoption of acronyms was modern warfare with its many highly technical terms. While there is no recorded use of military acronyms in documents dating from the American Civil War (acronyms such as ANV for "Army of Northern Virginia" post-date the war itself), they had become somewhat common in World War I and were very much a part even of the vernacular language of the soldiers during World War II,[32] who themselves were referred to as G.I.s.

text: The widespread, frequent use of acronyms across the whole range of registers is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon in most languages, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-20th century. As literacy rates rose, and as advances in science and technology brought with them a constant stream of new (and sometimes more complex) terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common.

text: By 1943, the term acronym had been used in English to recognize abbreviations (and contractions of phrases) that were pronounced as words.[31] (It was formed from the Greek words ἄκρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" and ὄνομα, onoma, "name.") For example, the army offense of being absent without official leave was abbreviated to "A.W.O.L." in reports, but when pronounced as a word (awol), it became an acronym.[33] While initial letters are commonly used to form an acronym, the original definition was "a word made from the initial letters or syllables of other words",[34] for example UNIVAC from UNIVersal Automatic Computer.[35]

text: In English, acronyms pronounced as words may be a 20th-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year."[36][37] However, although acronymic words seem not to have been employed in general vocabulary before the 20th century (as Wilton points out), the concept of their formation is treated as effortlessly understood (and evidently not novel) in a Poe story of the 1830s, "How to Write a Blackwood Article", which includes the contrived acronym P.R.E.T.T.Y.B.L.U.E.B.A.T.C.H.

text: Early examples in English[edit]

text: The use of Latin and Neo-Latin terms in vernaculars has been pan-European and predates modern English. Some examples of acronyms in this class are:

text:
A.M. (from Latin ante meridiem, "before noon") and P.M. (from Latin post meridiem, "after noon")
A.D. (from Latin Anno Domini, "in the year of our Lord"), whose complement in English, B.C. [Before Christ], is English-sourced
O.K., a term of disputed origin, dating back at least to the early 19th century, now used around the world

text: The earliest example of a word derived from an acronym listed by the OED is "abjud" (now "abjad"), formed from the original first four letters of the Arabic alphabet in the late 18th century.[38]  Some acrostics predate this, however, such as the Restoration witticism arranging the names of some members of Charles II's Committee for Foreign Affairs to produce the "CABAL" ministry.[39]

text: Current use[edit]

text: Acronyms are used most often to abbreviate names of organizations and long or frequently referenced terms. The armed forces and government agencies frequently employ acronyms; some well-known examples from the United States are among the "alphabet agencies" (also jokingly referred to as "alphabet soup") created by Franklin D. Roosevelt (also of course known as FDR) under the New Deal. Business and industry also are prolific coiners of acronyms. The rapid advance of science and technology in recent centuries seems to be an underlying force driving the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more manageable names.[citation needed] One representative example, from the U.S. Navy, is COMCRUDESPAC, which stands for commander, cruisers destroyers Pacific; it's also seen as "ComCruDesPac". "YABA-compatible" (where YABA stands for "yet another bloody acronym") is used to mean that a term's acronym can be pronounced but is not an offensive word, e.g., "When choosing a new name, be sure it is 'YABA-compatible'."[40]

text: Acronym use has been further popularized by text messaging on mobile phones with Short Message Systems (SMS). To fit messages into the 160-character SMS limit, acronyms such as "GF" (girlfriend), "LOL" (laughing out loud), and "DL" (download or down low) have become popular.[41] Some prescriptivists disdain texting acronyms and abbreviations as decreasing clarity, or as failure to use "pure" or "proper" English.  Others point out that language change has happened for thousands of years, and argue that it should be embraced as inevitable, or as innovation that adapts the language to changing circumstances. In this view, the modern practice is just as legitimate as those in "proper" English of the current generation of speakers, such as the abbreviation of corporation names in places with limited writing space (e.g., ticker tape, newspaper column inches).

text: Aids to learning the expansion without leaving a document[edit]

text: In formal writing for a broad audience, the expansion is typically given at the first occurrence of the acronym within a given text, for the benefit of those readers who do not know what it stands for. The capitalization of the original term is independent of it being acronymized, being lowercase for a common noun such as frequently asked questions (FAQ) but uppercase for a proper noun such as the United Nations (UN) (as explained at Case > Casing of expansions).

text: In addition to expansion at first use, some publications also have a key listing all acronyms used therein and what their expansions are. This is a convenience to readers for two reasons. The first is that if they are not reading the entire publication sequentially (which is a common mode of reading), then they may encounter an acronym without having seen its expansion. Having a key at the start or end of the publication obviates skimming over the text searching for an earlier use to find the expansion. (This is especially important in the print medium, where no search utility is available.) The second reason for the key feature is its pedagogical value in educational works such as textbooks. It gives students a way to review the meanings of the acronyms introduced in a chapter after they have done the line-by-line reading, and also a way to quiz themselves on the meanings (by covering up the expansion column and recalling the expansions from memory, then checking their answers by uncovering). In addition, this feature enables readers possessing knowledge of the abbreviations not to have to encounter expansions (redundant to such readers).

text: Expansion at first use and the abbreviation-key feature are aids to the reader that originated in the print era, and they are equally useful in print and online. In addition, the online medium offers yet more aids, such as tooltips, hyperlinks, and rapid search via search engine technology.

text: Jargon[edit]

text: Acronyms often occur in jargon. An acronym may have different meanings in different areas of industry, writing, and scholarship. The general reason for this is convenience and succinctness for specialists, although it has led some to obfuscate the meaning either intentionally, to deter those without such domain-specific knowledge, or unintentionally, by creating an acronym that already existed.

text:
The medical literature has been struggling to control the proliferation of acronyms as their use has evolved from aiding communication to hindering it. This has become such a problem that it is even evaluated at the level of medical academies such as the American Academy of Dermatology.
[42]

text: As mnemonics[edit]

text: Acronyms are often taught as mnemonic devices, for example in physics the colors of the visible spectrum are ROY G. BIV (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet). They are also used as mental checklists, for example in aviation: GUMPS, which is Gas-Undercarriage-Mixture-Propeller-Seatbelts. Other examples of mnemonic acronyms include CAN SLIM, and PAVPANIC as well as PEMDAS.

text: Acronyms as legendary etymology[edit]

text: It is not uncommon for acronyms to be cited in a kind of false etymology, called a folk etymology, for a word. Such etymologies persist in popular culture but have no factual basis in historical linguistics, and are examples of language-related urban legends. For example, cop is commonly cited as being derived, it is presumed, from "constable on patrol,"[43] and posh from "port out, starboard home".[44] With some of these specious expansions, the "belief" that the etymology is acronymic has clearly been tongue-in-cheek among many citers, as with "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden" for golf, although many other (more credulous) people have uncritically taken it for fact.[44][45] Taboo words in particular commonly have such false etymologies: shit from "ship/store high in transit"[36][46] or "special high-intensity training" and fuck from "for unlawful carnal knowledge", or "fornication under consent/command of the king".[46]

text: Orthographic styling[edit]

text: Punctuation[edit]

text: Showing the ellipsis of letters[edit]

text: In English, abbreviations have traditionally been written with a full stop/period/point in place of the deleted part to show the ellipsis of letters—although the colon and apostrophe have also had this role—and with a space after full stops (e.g. "A. D."). In the case of most acronyms, each letter is an abbreviation of a separate word and, in theory, should get its own termination mark. Such punctuation is diminishing with the belief that the presence of all-capital letters is sufficient to indicate that the word is an abbreviation.[47]

text: Ellipsis-is-understood style[edit]

text: Some influential style guides, such as that of the BBC, no longer require punctuation to show ellipsis; some even proscribe it. Larry Trask, American author of The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, states categorically that, in British English, "this tiresome and unnecessary practice is now obsolete".[48]

text: Pronunciation-dependent style and periods[edit]

text: Nevertheless, some influential style guides, many of them American, still require periods in certain instances. For example, The New York Times' guide recommends following each segment with a period when the letters are pronounced individually, as in K.G.B., but not when pronounced as a word, as in NATO.[49] The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the punctuation scheme.

text: Other conventions[edit]

text: When a multiple-letter abbreviation is formed from a single word, periods are in general not used, although they may be common in informal usage. TV, for example, may stand for a single word (television or transvestite, for instance), and is in general spelled without punctuation (except in the plural). Although PS stands for the single word postscript (or the Latin postscriptum), it is often spelled with periods (P.S.).

text: The slash ('/', or solidus) is sometimes used to separate the letters in a two-letter acronym, as in N/A (not applicable, not available), c/o (care of) and w/o (without).

text: Inconveniently long words used frequently in related contexts can be represented according to their letter count. For example, i18n abbreviates internationalization, a computer-science term for adapting software for worldwide use. The 18 represents the 18 letters that come between the first and the last in internationalization. Localization can be abbreviated l10n, multilingualization m17n, and accessibility a11y. In addition to the use of a specific number replacing that many letters, the more general "x" can be used to replace an unspecified number of letters. Examples include Crxn for crystallization and the series familiar to physicians for history, diagnosis, and treatment (hx, dx, tx).

text: Representing plurals and possessives[edit]

text: There is a question about how to pluralize acronyms. Often a writer will add an 's' following an apostrophe, as in "PC's". However, Kate Turabian, writing about style in academic writings,[50] allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" and "Ph.D.'s". The Modern Language Association[51] and American Psychological Association[52][53] prohibit apostrophes from being used to pluralize acronyms regardless of periods (so "compact discs" would be "CDs" or "C.D.s"), whereas The New York Times style guide requires an apostrophe when pluralizing all abbreviations regardless of periods (preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's").[54]

text: Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods appear especially complex: for example, the C.D.'s' labels (the labels of the compact discs). In some instances, however, an apostrophe may increase clarity: for example, if the final letter of an abbreviation is S, as in SOS's (although abbreviations ending with S can also take -es, e.g. SOSes), or when pluralizing an abbreviation that has periods.[55][56]

text: A particularly rich source of options arises when the plural of an acronym would normally be indicated in a word other than the final word if spelled out in full. A classic example is Member of Parliament, which in plural is Members of Parliament. It is possible then to abbreviate this as M's P.[57][58] (or similar[59]), as used by former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley.[60][61][62] This usage is less common than forms with s at the end, such as MPs, and may appear dated or pedantic. In common usage, therefore, weapons of mass destruction becomes WMDs, prisoners of war becomes POWs, and runs batted in becomes RBIs.[63]

text: The argument that acronyms should have no different plural form (for example, "If D can stand for disc, it can also stand for discs") is in general disregarded because of the practicality in distinguishing singulars and plurals. This is not the case, however, when the abbreviation is understood to describe a plural noun already: For example, U.S. is short for United States, but not United State. In this case, the options for making a possessive form of an abbreviation that is already in its plural form without a final s may seem awkward: for example, U.S., U.S.'s, etc. In such instances, possessive abbreviations are often foregone in favor of simple attributive usage (for example, the U.S. economy) or expanding the abbreviation to its full form and then making the possessive (for example, the United States' economy). On the other hand, in speech, the pronunciation United States's sometimes is used.

text: Abbreviations that come from single, rather than multiple, words—such as TV (television)—are usually pluralized without apostrophes (two TVs); most writers feel that the apostrophe should be reserved for the possessive (the TV's antenna).

text: In some languages, the convention of doubling the letters in the acronym is used to indicate plural words: for example, the Spanish EE. UU., for Estados Unidos ('United States'). This old convention is still followed for a limited number of English abbreviations, such as SS. for "Saints", pp. for the Latin plural of "pages", paginae, or MSS for "manuscripts". In the case of pp. it derives from the original Latin phrase per procurationem meaning 'through the agency of';[64] an English translation alternative is particular pages in a book or document: see pp. 8–88.[65]

text: Case[edit]

text: All-caps style[edit]

text: The most common capitalization scheme seen with acronyms is all-uppercase (all-caps), except for those few that have linguistically taken on an identity as regular words, with the acronymous etymology of the words fading into the background of common knowledge, such as has occurred with the words scuba, laser, and radar—these are known as anacronyms.[66] Anacronyms (note well -acro-) should not be homophonously confused with anachronyms (note well -chron-), which are a type of misnomer.

text: Small-caps variant[edit]

text: Small caps are sometimes used to make the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of some American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today, is to use small caps for acronyms longer than three letters[citation needed]; thus "U.S." and "FDR" in normal caps, but "nato" in small caps. The acronyms "AD" and "BC" are often smallcapped as well, as in: "From 4004 bc to ad 525".

text: Mixed-case variant[edit]

text: Words derived from an acronym by affixing are typically expressed in mixed case, so the root acronym is clear. For example, pre-WWII politics, post-NATO world, DNAase. In some cases a derived acronym may also be expressed in mixed case. For example, messenger RNA and transfer RNA become mRNA and tRNA.

text: Pronunciation-dependent style and case[edit]

text: Some publications choose to capitalize only the first letter of acronyms, reserving all-caps styling for initialisms, writing the pronounced acronyms "Nato" and "Aids" in mixed case, but the initialisms "USA" and "FBI" in all caps. For example, this is the style used in The Guardian,[67] and BBC News typically edits to this style (though its official style guide, dating from 2003, still recommends all-caps[68]). The logic of this style is that the pronunciation is reflected graphically by the capitalization scheme.

text: Some style manuals also base the letters' case on their number. The New York Times, for example, keeps NATO in all capitals (while several guides in the British press may render it Nato), but uses lower case in UNICEF (from "United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund") because it is more than four letters, and to style it in caps might look ungainly (flirting with the appearance of "shouting capitals").

text: Numerals and constituent words[edit]

text: While abbreviations typically exclude the initials of short function words (such as "and", "or", "of", or "to"), this is not always the case. (A similar set of words is sometimes left as lowercase in headers and publication titles.) Sometimes function words are included to make a pronounceable acronym, such as CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Sometimes the letters representing these words are written in lower case, such as in the cases of TfL (Transport for London) and LotR (Lord of the Rings); this usually occurs when the acronym represents a multi-word proper noun.

text: Numbers (both cardinal and ordinal) in names are often represented by digits rather than initial letters: as in 4GL (Fourth generation language) or G77 (Group of 77). Large numbers may use metric prefixes, as with Y2K for "Year 2000" (sometimes written Y2k, because the SI symbol for 1000 is k—not K, which stands for kelvin). Exceptions using initials for numbers include TLA (three-letter acronym/abbreviation) and GoF (Gang of Four). Abbreviations using numbers for other purposes include repetitions, such as W3C ("World Wide Web Consortium") and T3 (Trends, Tips & Tools for Everyday Living); pronunciation, such as B2B ("business to business"); and numeronyms, such as i18n ("internationalization"; 18 represents the 18 letters between the initial i and the final n).

text: Casing of expansions[edit]

text:
Although many authors of expository writing show a predisposition to capitalizing the initials of the expansion for pedagogical emphasis (trying to thrust the reader's attention toward where the letters are coming from), this sometimes conflicts with the convention of English orthography, which reserves capitals in the middle of sentences for proper nouns. Enforcing the general convention, most professional editors[citation needed] case-fold such expansions to their standard orthography when editing manuscripts for publication. The justification is that (1) readers are smart enough to figure out where the letters came from, even without their being capitalized for emphasis, and that (2) common nouns do not take capital initials in standard English orthography.  Such house styles also usually disfavor bold or italic font for the initial letters.[citation needed] For example,
"the onset of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)" or "the onset of congestive heart failure (CHF)" if found in an unpublished manuscript would be rewritten as "the onset of congestive heart failure (CHF)" in the final published article when following the AMA Manual of Style.[69]

text: Changes to (or word play on) the expanded meaning[edit]

text: Pseudo-acronyms[edit]

text: Some apparent acronyms or other abbreviations do not stand for anything and cannot be expanded to some meaning. Such pseudo-acronyms may be pronunciation-based, such as BBQ (bee-bee-cue), for "barbecue", or K9 (kay-nine) for "canine". Pseudo-acronyms also frequently develop as "orphan initialisms"; an existing acronym is redefined as a non-acronymous name, severing its link to its previous meaning.[70][71] For example, the letters of the SAT, a US college entrance test originally dubbed "Scholastic Aptitude Test", no longer officially stand for anything.[72][73]

text: This is common with companies that want to retain brand recognition while moving away from an outdated image: American Telephone and Telegraph became AT&T,[70] Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC to de-emphasize the role of frying in the preparation of its signature dishes,[74][a] and British Petroleum became BP.[71][75] Russia Today has rebranded itself as RT. Genzyme Transgenics Corporation became GTC Biotherapeutics, Inc. in order to reduce perceived corporate risk of sabotage/vandalism by Luddite activists.[citation needed]

text: Pseudo-acronyms may have advantages in international markets:[according to whom?] for example, some national affiliates of International Business Machines are legally incorporated as "IBM" (for example, "IBM Canada") to avoid translating the full name into local languages.[citation needed] Likewise, "UBS" is the name of the merged Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation,[76] and  "HSBC" has replaced "The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation." Sometimes,[when?] companies whose original name gives a clear indication of their place of origin will use acronyms when expanding to foreign markets—for example, Toronto-Dominion Bank continues to operate under the full name in Canada, but its U.S. subsidiary is known as TD Bank,[citation needed] just as Royal Bank of Canada used its full name in Canada (a constitutional monarchy), but its now-defunct U.S. subsidiary was called RBC Bank.[citation needed]

text: Redundant acronyms and RAS syndrome[edit]

text: Rebranding can lead to redundant acronym syndrome,[original research?] as when Trustee Savings Bank became TSB Bank,[citation needed] or when Railway Express Agency became REA Express.[citation needed] A few[vague] high-tech companies have taken the redundant acronym to the extreme[according to whom?]: for example, ISM Information Systems Management Corp. and SHL Systemhouse Ltd.[citation needed] Examples in entertainment include the television shows CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Navy: NCIS[citation needed] ("Navy" was dropped in the second season), where the redundancy was likely[weasel words] designed to educate new viewers as to what the initials stood for.[citation needed] The same reasoning[according to whom?] was in evidence when the Royal Bank of Canada's Canadian operations rebranded to RBC Royal Bank,[citation needed] or when Bank of Montreal rebranded their retail banking subsidiary BMO Bank of Montreal.[citation needed]

text: Another common example[according to whom?] is "RAM memory", which is redundant because "RAM" ("random-access memory") includes the initial of the word "memory".[citation needed] "PIN" stands for "personal identification number", obviating the second word in "PIN number"[citation needed]; in this case its retention may be motivated to avoid ambiguity with the homophonous word "pin".[original research?] Other examples include "ATM machine," "EAB bank," "CableACE Award," "DC Comics," "HIV virus," Microsoft's NT Technology, and the formerly redundant "SAT test," now simply "SAT Reasoning Test").[citation needed] TNN (The Nashville/National Network) also renamed itself "The New TNN" for a brief interlude.[citation needed]

text: Simple redefining[edit]

text: Sometimes, the initials continue to stand for an expanded meaning, but the original meaning is simply replaced. Some examples:

text:
DVD was originally an acronym of the unofficial term digital video disc, but is now stated by the DVD Forum as standing for Digital Versatile Disc.
GAO changed the full form of its name from General Accounting Office to Government Accountability Office.
GPO (in the United States) changed the full form of its name from Government Printing Office to Government Publishing Office.
RAID used to mean Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but is now commonly interpreted as Redundant Array of Independent Disks.
WWF originally stood for World Wildlife Fund, but now stands for Worldwide Fund for Nature (although the former name is still used in Canada and the United States).
The UICC, whose initials came from the Romance-language versions of its name (such as French Union Internationale Contre le Cancer, "International Union Against Cancer"), changed the English expansion of its name to Union for International Cancer Control (from International Union Against Cancer) so that the English expansion, too, would correspond to the UICC initials.

text: Backronyms[edit]

text: A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing word. For example, the novelist and critic Anthony Burgess once proposed that the word "book" ought to stand for "Box Of Organized Knowledge."[77] A classic real-world example of this is the name of the predecessor to the Apple Macintosh, The Apple Lisa, which was said to refer to "Local Integrated Software Architecture", but was actually named after Steve Jobs's daughter, born in 1978.

text: Backronyms are often times used to comedic effect. An example of creating a backronym for comedic effect would be in naming a group or organization, the name A.C.R.O.N.Y.M stands for (among other things) "A Clever Regiment Of Nerdy Young Men".

text: Contrived acronyms[edit]

text: Acronyms are sometimes contrived, that is, deliberately designed to be especially apt for the thing being named (by having a dual meaning or by borrowing the positive connotations of an existing word). Some examples of contrived acronyms are USA PATRIOT, CAN SPAM, CAPTCHA and ACT UP.[citation needed] The clothing company French Connection began referring to itself as fcuk, standing for "French Connection United Kingdom." The company then created T-shirts and several advertising campaigns that exploit the acronym's similarity to the taboo word "fuck."

text: The US Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is known for developing contrived acronyms to name projects, including RESURRECT, NIRVANA, and DUDE. In July 2010, Wired Magazine reported that DARPA announced programs to "..transform biology from a descriptive to a predictive field of science" named BATMAN and ROBIN for Biochronicity and Temporal Mechanisms Arising in Nature and Robustness of Biologically-Inspired Networks,[78] a reference to the Batman and Robin comic-book superheroes.

text: The short-form names of clinical trials and other scientific studies constitute a large class of acronyms that includes many contrived examples, as well as many with a partial rather than complete correspondence of letters to expansion components. These trials tend to have full names that are accurately descriptive of what the trial is about but are thus also too long to serve practically as names within the syntax of a sentence, so a short name is also developed, which can serve as a syntactically useful handle and also provide at least a degree of mnemonic reminder as to the full name. Examples widely known in medicine include the ALLHAT trial (Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial) and the CHARM trial (Candesartan in Heart Failure: Assessment of Reduction in Mortality and Morbidity). The fact that RAS syndrome is often involved, as well as that the letters often don't entirely match, have sometimes been pointed out by annoyed researchers preoccupied by the idea that because the archetypal form of acronyms originated with one-to-one letter matching, there must be some moral impropriety in their ever deviating from that form. However, the raison d'être of clinical trial acronyms, as with gene and protein symbols, is simply to have a syntactically usable and recallable short name to complement the long name that is often syntactically unusable and not memorized. It is useful for the short name to give a reminder of the long name, which supports the reasonable censure of "cutesy" examples that provide little to no hint of it. But beyond that reasonably close correspondence, the short name's chief utility is in functioning cognitively as a name, rather than being a cryptic and forgettable string, albeit faithful to the matching of letters. However, other reasonable critiques have been (1) that it is irresponsible to mention trial acronyms without explaining them at least once by providing the long names somewhere in the document,[79]  and (2) that the proliferation of trial acronyms has resulted in ambiguity, such as 3 different trials all called ASPECT, which is another reason why failing to explain them somewhere in the document is irresponsible in scientific communication.[79] At least one study has evaluated the citation impact and other traits of acronym-named trials compared with others,[80] finding both good aspects (mnemonic help, name recall) and potential flaws (connotatively driven bias).[80]

text: Some acronyms are chosen deliberately to avoid a name considered undesirable: For example, Verliebt in Berlin (ViB), a German telenovela, was first intended to be Alles nur aus Liebe (All for Love), but was changed to avoid the resultant acronym ANAL. Likewise, the Computer Literacy and Internet Technology qualification is known as CLaIT,[81] rather than CLIT. In Canada, the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance (Party) was quickly renamed to the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance when its opponents pointed out that its initials spelled CCRAP (pronounced "see crap"). (The satirical magazine Frank had proposed alternatives to CCRAP, namely SSHIT and NSDAP.) Two Irish Institutes of Technology (Galway and Tralee) chose different acronyms from other institutes when they were upgraded from Regional Technical colleges. Tralee RTC became the Institute of Technology Tralee (ITT), as opposed to Tralee Institute of Technology (TIT). Galway RTC became Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), as opposed to Galway Institute of Technology (GIT). The charity sports organization Team in Training is known as "TNT" and not "TIT". Technological Institute of Textile & Sciences is still known as TITS. George Mason University was planning to name their law school the Antonin Scalia School of Law (ASSOL) in honor of the late Antonin Scalia, only to change it to the Antonin Scalia Law School later.[82]

text: Macronyms/nested acronyms[edit]

text: A macronym, or nested acronym, is an acronym in which one or more letters stand for acronyms themselves. The word "macronym" is a portmanteau of "macro-" and "acronym".

text: Some examples of macronyms are:

text:
XHR stands for "XML HTTP Request", in which XML is "eXtensible Markup Language", and HTTP stands for "HyperText Transfer Protocol".
POWER stands for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC, in which RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing.
VHDL stands for "VHSIC Hardware Description Language", in which VHSIC stands for "Very High Speed Integrated Circuit".
XSD stands for "XML Schema Definition", in which XML stands for "eXtensible Markup Language".
SECS stands for "SEMI equipment communication standard", in which SEMI stands for "Semiconductor equipment manufacturing industries".
AIM stands for "AOL Instant Messenger", in which AOL stands for "America Online".
HASP stood for Houston Automatic Spooling Priority, but spooling itself was an acronym – simultaneous peripheral operations on-line

text: Some macronyms can be multiply nested: the second-order acronym points to another one further down a hierarchy. In an informal competition run by the magazine New Scientist, a fully documented specimen was discovered that may be the most deeply nested of all: RARS is the "Regional ATOVS Retransmission Service"; ATOVS is "Advanced TOVS"; TOVS is "TIROS operational vertical sounder"; and TIROS is "Television infrared observational satellite".[83] Fully expanded, "RARS" might thus become "Regional Advanced Television Infrared Observational Satellite Operational Vertical Sounder Retransmission Service". However, to say that "RARS" stands directly for that string of words, or can be interchanged with it in syntax (in the same way that "CHF" can be usefully interchanged with "congestive heart failure"), is a prescriptive misapprehension rather than a linguistically accurate description; the true nature of such a term is closer to anacronymic than to being interchangeable like simpler acronyms are. The latter are fully reducible in an attempt to "spell everything out and avoid all abbreviations," but the former are irreducible in that respect; they can be annotated with parenthetical explanations, but they cannot be eliminated from speech or writing in any useful or practical way. Just as the words laser and radar function as words in syntax and cognition without a need to focus on their acronymic origins, terms such as "RARS" and "CHA2DS2–VASc score" are irreducible in natural language; if they are purged, the form of language that is left may conform to some imposed rule, but it cannot be described as remaining natural. Similarly, protein and gene nomenclature, which uses symbols extensively, includes such terms as the name of the NACHT protein domain, which reflects the symbols of some proteins that contain the domain—NAIP (NLR family apoptosis inhibitor protein), C2TA (major histocompatibility complex class II transcription activator), HET-E (incompatibility locus protein from Podospora anserine), and TP1 (telomerase-associated protein)—but is not syntactically reducible to them. The name is thus itself more symbol than acronym, and its expansion cannot replace it while preserving its function in natural syntax as a name within a clause clearly parsable by human readers or listeners.

text: Recursive acronyms[edit]

text: A special type of macronym, the recursive acronym, has letters whose expansion refers back to the macronym itself. One of the earliest examples appears in The Hacker's Dictionary as MUNG, which stands for "MUNG Until No Good".

text: Some examples of recursive acronyms are:

text:
GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix"
LAME stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder"
PHP stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor"
WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator"
HURD stands for "HIRD of Unix-replacing daemons", where HIRD itself stands for "HURD of interfaces representing depth" (a "mutually recursive" acronym)

text: Non-English languages[edit]

text: Specific languages[edit]

text: Chinese[edit]

text: In English language discussions of languages with syllabic or logographic writing systems (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), "acronyms" describe the short forms that take selected characters from a multi-character word.

text: For example, in Chinese, "university" (大學/大学, literally "great learning") is usually abbreviated simply as 大 ("great") when used with the name of the institute. So Peking University (北京大学) is commonly shortened to 北大 (lit. "north-great") by also only taking the first character of Peking, the "northern capital" (北京; Beijing). In some cases, however, other characters than the first can be selected. For example, the local short form of Hong Kong University (香港大學) uses Kong (港大) rather than Hong.

text: There are also cases where some longer phrases are abbreviated drastically, especially in Chinese politics, where proper nouns were initially translated from Soviet Leninist terms. For instance, the full name of China's highest ruling council, the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), is "Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China" (中国共产党中央政治局常务委员会). The term then reduced the "Communist Party of China" part of its name through acronyms, then the "Standing Committee" part, again through acronyms, to create "中共中央政治局常委". Alternatively, it omitted the "Communist Party" part altogether, creating "Politburo Standing Committee" (政治局常委会), and eventually just "Standing Committee" (常委会). The PSC's members full designations are "Member of the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China" (中国共产党中央政治局常务委员会委员); this was eventually drastically reduced to simply Changwei (常委), with the term Ruchang (入常) used increasingly for officials destined for a future seat on the PSC. In another example, the word "全国人民代表大会" (National People's Congress) can be broken into four parts: "全国" = "the whole nation", "人民" = "people", "代表" = "representatives", "大会" = "conference". Yet, in its short form "人大" (literally "man/people big"), only the first characters from the second and the fourth parts are selected; the first part ("全国") and the third part ("代表") are simply ignored. In describing such abbreviations, the term initialism is inapplicable.[original research?]

text: Many proper nouns become shorter and shorter over time. For example, the CCTV New Year's Gala, whose full name is literally read as "China Central Television Spring Festival Joint Celebration Evening Gala" (中国中央电视台春节联欢晚会) was first shortened to "Spring Festival Joint Celebration Evening Gala" (春节联欢晚会), but eventually referred to as simply Chunwan (春晚). Along the same vein, Zhongguo Zhongyang Dianshi Tai (中国中央电视台) was reduced to Yangshi (央视) in the mid-2000s.

text: Korean[edit]

text: Many aspects of academics in Korea follow similar acronym patterns as Chinese, owing to the languages' commonalities, like using the word for "big" or "great" i.e. dae (대), to refer to universities (대학; daehak, literally "great learning" although "big school" is an acceptable alternate). They can be interpreted similar to American university appellations, such as "UPenn" or "Texas Tech."

text: Some acronyms are shortened forms of the school's name, like how Hongik University (홍익대학교, Hongik Daehakgyo) is shortened to Hongdae (홍대, "Hong, the big [school]" or "Hong-U") Other acronyms can refer to the university's main subject, e.g. Korea National University of Education (한국교원대학교, Hanguk Gyowon Daehakgyo) is shortened to Gyowondae (교원대, "Big Ed." or "Ed.-U"). Other schools use a Koreanized version of their English acronym. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (한국과학기술원, Hanguk Gwahak Gisulwon) is referred to as KAIST (카이스트, Kaiseuteu) in both English and Korean. The 3 most prestigious schools in Korea are known as SKY (스카이, seukai), combining the first letter of their English names (Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei Universities). In addition, the College Scholastic Ability Test (대학수학능력시험, Daehak Suhang Neungryeok Siheom) is shortened to Suneung (수능, "S.A.").

text: Japanese[edit]

text: The Japanese language makes extensive use of abbreviations, but only some of these are acronyms.

text: Chinese-based words (Sino-Japanese vocabulary) uses similar acronym formation to Chinese, like Tōdai (東大) for Tōkyō Daigaku (東京大学, Tokyo University). In some cases alternative pronunciations are used, as in Saikyō for 埼京, from Saitama + Tōkyo (埼玉＋東京), rather than Saitō.

text: Non-Chinese foreign borrowings (gairaigo) are instead frequently abbreviated as clipped compounds, rather than acronyms, using several initial sounds. This is visible in katakana transcriptions of foreign words, but is also found with native words (written in hiragana). For example, the Pokémon media franchise's name originally stood for "pocket monsters" (ポケット·モンスター → ポケモン), which is still the long-form of the name in Japanese, and "wāpuro" stands for "word processor" (ワード·プロセッサー → ワープロ).

text: German[edit]

text: To a greater degree than English does, German tends toward acronyms that use initial syllables rather than initial single letters, although it uses many of the latter type as well. Some examples of the syllabic type are Gestapo rather than GSP (for Geheime Staatspolizei, 'secret state police'); Flak rather than FAK (for Fliegerabwehrkanone, anti-aircraft gun); Kripo rather than KP (for Kriminalpolizei, detective division police). The extension of such contraction to a pervasive or whimsical degree has been mockingly labeled Aküfi (for Abkürzungsfimmel, strange habit of abbreviating). Examples of Aküfi include Vokuhila (for vorne kurz, hinten lang, short in the front, long in the back, i.e., a mullet) and the mocking of Adolf Hitler's title as Gröfaz (Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten, Greatest General of all Times).

text: Hebrew[edit]

text: It is common to take more than just one initial letter from each of the words composing the acronym; regardless of this, the abbreviation sign gershayim ⟨״⟩ is always written between the second-last and last letters of the non-inflected form of the acronym, even if by this it separates letters of the same original word.  Examples (keep in mind Hebrew reads right-to-left): ארה״ב (for ארצות הברית, the United States); ברה״מ (for ברית המועצות, the Soviet Union); ראשל״צ (for ראשון לציון, Rishon LeZion); ביה״ס (for בית הספר, the school). An example that takes only the initial letters from its component words is צה״ל (Tzahal, for צבא הגנה לישראל, Israel Defense Forces). In inflected forms the abbreviation sign gershayim remains between the second-last and last letters of the non-inflected form of the acronym (e.g. "report", singular: דו״ח, plural: דו״חות; "squad commander", masculine: מ״כ, feminine: מ״כית).

text: Indonesian[edit]

text: There is also a widespread use of acronyms in Indonesia in every aspect of social life. For example, the Golkar political party stands for Partai Golongan Karya, Monas stands for "Monumen Nasional" (National Monument), the Angkot public transport stands for "Angkutan Kota" (city public transportation), warnet stands for "warung internet" (internet cafe), and many others. Some acronyms are considered formal (or officially adopted), while many more are considered informal, slang or colloquial.

text: The capital's metropolitan area (Jakarta and its surrounding satellite regions), Jabodetabek, is another infamous acronym. This stands for Jakarta-Bogor-Depok-Tangerang-Bekasi. Many highways are also named by the acronym method; e.g. Jalan Tol (Toll Road) Jagorawi (Jakarta-Bogor-Ciawi) and Purbaleunyi (Purwakarta-Bandung-Cileunyi), Joglo Semar (Jogja-solo-semarang).

text: In some languages, especially those that use certain alphabets, many acronyms come from the governmental use, particularly in the military and law enforcement services. The Indonesian military (TNI—Tentara Nasional Indonesia) and Indonesian police (POLRI—Kepolisian Republik Indonesia) are infamous for heavy acronyms use. Examples include the Kopassus (Komando Pasukan Khusus; Special Forces Command), Kopaska (Komando Pasukan Katak; Frogmen Command), Kodim (Komando Distrik Militer; Military District Command—one of the Indonesian army's administrative divisions), Serka (Sersan Kepala; Head Sergeant), Akmil (Akademi Militer; Military Academy—in Magelang) and many other terms regarding ranks, units, divisions, procedures, etc.

text: Heavy acronym use by Indonesians, makes it difficult for foreigners and learners of Bahasa Indonesia to seek information and news in Indonesian media.[citation needed]

text: Russian[edit]

text: Acronyms that use parts of words (not necessarily syllables) are commonplace in Russian as well, e.g. Газпром (Gazprom), for Газовая промышленность (Gazovaya promyshlennost, gas industry). There are also initialisms, such as СМИ (SMI, for средства массовой информации sredstva massovoy informatsii, means of mass informing, i.e. mass media). Another Russian acronym, ГУЛаг (GULag) combines two initials and three letters of the final word: it stands for Главное управление лагерей (Glavnoe upravlenie lagerey, Chief Administration of Camps).

text: Historically, OTMA was an acronym sometimes used by the daughters of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and his consort, Alexandra Feodorovna, as a group nickname for themselves, built from the first letter of each girl's name in the order of their births : Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.

text: Swahili[edit]

text: In Swahili, acronyms are common for naming organizations such as TUKI, which stands for Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (the Institute for Swahili Research). Multiple initial letters (often the initial syllable of words) are often drawn together, as seen more in some languages than others.

text: Vietnamese[edit]

text: In Vietnamese, which has an abundance of compound words, initialisms are very commonly used for both proper and common nouns. Examples include TP.HCM (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Ho Chi Minh City), THPT (trung học phổ thông, high school), CLB (câu lạc bộ, club), CSDL (cơ sở dữ liệu, database), NXB (nhà xuất bản, publisher), ÔBACE (ông bà anh chị em, a general form of address), and CTTĐVN (các Thánh tử đạo Việt Nam, Vietnamese Martyrs). Longer examples include CHXHCNVN (Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam) and MTDTGPMNVN (Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam, Viet Cong). Long initialisms have become widespread in legal contexts in Vietnam.[84] It is also common for a writer to coin an ad-hoc initialism for repeated use in an article.

text: Each letter in an initialism corresponds to one morpheme—that is, one syllable. When the first letter of a syllable has a tone mark or other diacritic, the diacritic may be omitted from the initialism, for example ĐNA or ĐNÁ for Đông Nam Á (Southeast Asia) and LMCA or LMCÂ for Liên minh châu Âu (European Union). The letter "Ư" is often replaced by "W" in initialisms to avoid confusion with "U", for example UBTWMTTQVN or UBTƯMTTQVN for Ủy ban Trung ương Mặt trận Tổ quốc Việt Nam (Central Committee of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front).

text: Initialisms are purely a written convenience, being pronounced the same way as their expansions. As the names of many Vietnamese letters are disyllabic, it would be less convenient to pronounce an initialism by its individual letters. Acronyms pronounced as words are rare in Vietnamese, occurring when an acronym itself is borrowed from another language. Examples include SIĐA (pronounced [s̪i˧˧ ˀɗaː˧˧]), a respelling of the French acronym SIDA (AIDS); VOA (pronounced [vwaː˧˧]), a literal reading of the English initialism for Voice of America; and NASA (pronounced [naː˧˧ zaː˧˧]), borrowed directly from the English acronym.

text: As in Chinese, many compound words can be shortened to the first syllable when forming a longer word. For example, the term Việt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of "Việt Nam" (Vietnam) and "Cộng sản" (communist). This mechanism is limited to Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. Unlike with Chinese, such shortened words are considered portmanteau words or blend words rather than acronyms or initialisms, because the Vietnamese alphabet still requires each component word to be written as more than one character.

text: General grammatical considerations[edit]

text: Declension[edit]

text: In languages where nouns are declined, various methods are used. An example is Finnish, where a colon is used to separate inflection from the letters:

text:
An acronym is pronounced as a word: Nato [nato]—Natoon [natoːn] "into Nato", Nasalta "from NASA"
An acronym is pronounced as letters: EU [eː uː]—EU:hun [eː uːhun] "into EU"
An acronym is interpreted as words: EU [euroːpan unioni]—EU:iin [euroːpan unioniːn] "into EU"

text: The process above is similar to how, in English, hyphens are used for clarity when prefixes are added to acronyms, thus pre-NATO policy (rather than preNATO).

text: Lenition[edit]

text: In languages such as Scottish Gaelic and Irish, where lenition (initial consonant mutation) is commonplace, acronyms must also be modified in situations where case and context dictate it. In the case of Scottish Gaelic, a lower case "h" is added after the initial consonant; for example, BBC Scotland in the genitive case would be written as BhBC Alba, with the acronym pronounced "VBC". Likewise, the Gaelic acronym for "television" (gd: telebhisean) is TBh, pronounced "TV", as in English.

text: Extremes[edit]

text:
The longest acronym, according to the 1965 edition of Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary, is ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC, a United States Navy term that stands for "Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command."  Another term COMNAVSEACOMBATSYSENGSTA, which stands for "Commander, Naval Sea Systems Combat Engineering Station" is longer but the word "Combat" is not shortened.
The world's longest acronym, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT (Нииомтплабопармбетжелбетрабсбомонимонконотдтехстромонт). However, this is more precisely a combination acronym/clipped compound, as multiple initial letters of some constituent words are used. The 56-letter term (54 in Cyrillic) is from the Concise Dictionary of Soviet Terminology and means "The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." (научно-исследовательская [...] лаборатория операций по армированию бетона и железобетонных работ по сооружению сборно-монолитных и монолитных конструкций отдела технологии строительно-монтажного управления)
The card-game Magic: The Gathering has a playing card called "Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental", with text on it saying: "Just call it OMRSTPLRLCNSWMTCTHTALCNEE for short."[85]


document_title: Parliament of the Bahamas

question_text: who proposes a new law in the bahamas for the government

root

text: Parliament of the Bahamas

text: History[edit]

text: Originally inhabited by the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taino people, the Bahamas were the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492. Although the Spanish never colonized the Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery in Hispaniola. The islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, when English colonists from Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera.

tag: p

text: In 1670 King Charles II granted the islands to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas, who rented the islands from the king with rights of trading, tax, appointing governors, and administering the country.[1] The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy.

text: A General Assembly was established in 1729; the first elections took place in September, and on 29 September 1729 twenty-four members representing the islands of New Providence, Eleuthera, and Harbour Island gathered together at the house of Samuel Lawford to form the Assembly.

text: The Bahamas legislature has had a bicameral feature since its inception in 1729 as the Governor's Council performed both executive and legislative functions. In 1841 Governor Francis Cockburn divided Governors Council into two separate councils. The Executive Council to deal with executive functions and the Legislative council to deal with Legislative functions of the upper house. So in 1841 the Bahamian legislature took on more structure, with the Legislative council being the superior legislative body and the House of Assembly being the lesser. The Legislative council eventually was renamed to the senate in 1964 and became the weaker house while the House of Assembly became the superior legislative body. The Senate is however still known as the upper house and the House of Assembly still as the lower house.[2]

text: Bahamians achieved self-government in 1964 and full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations on July 10, 1973, retaining Queen Elizabeth II as monarch. The Parliament as presently constituted was established by Chapter 5 of the Constitution of The Bahamas, which came into effect upon the country's independence from the United Kingdom.

text: House of Assembly[edit]

text: The House of Assembly is the lower chamber. It consists of 39 members (known as Members of Parliament), elected from individual constituencies for five-year terms. As under the Westminster system, the government may dissolve the parliament and call elections at any time. The House of Assembly performs all major legislative functions. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party controlling the majority of the House of Assembly seats. Dewitt Halson Moultrie was elected the new speaker of the House of Assembly on May 24, 2017.

text: Latest election[edit]

text: Bahamian general election, 2017:

text:
Party
Votes
%
Seats
+/–

Free National Movement
91,137
57
35
+26

Progressive Liberal Party
59,164
37
4
–25

Democratic National Alliance
7,537
4.7
0
0

Bahamas Constitution Party

0
0

Bahamas National Citizen Coalition

0
New

The Gatekeepers

0
New

Independents
1,244
0.8
0
-1

Invalid/blank votes

–
–
–

Total
159,910

39
+1

Registered voters/turnout

–
–

Sources: Antillean, Nassau Guardian

text: Senate[edit]

text: The Senate (upper house) consists of 16 members appointed by the Governor-General. Nine of these senators are selected on the advice of the Prime Minister, four on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, and three on the advice of the Prime Minister after consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. The Senate is authorized by the Constitution to pass Bills in the same manner as passed by the House or it can make such amendments to the Bill should it consider it necessary. Those amendments will then have to be approved by the House of Assembly. The Senate may even reject a Bill outrightly that had been passed by the House. However, if the House passes the Bill in two successive sessions, and the Senate rejects the Bill each time, the House of Assembly may send the Bill directly to the Governor-General without the Senate having consented to the Bill.

text: If the House passes a Money Bill and sends that Bill to the Senate for its consent, and if the Senate does not give its consent within a month after receiving the Bill, the money bill is sent to the Governor-General for assent even though the Senate had not consented to it [3]

text: In a historic vote, attorney Sharon Wilson was unanimously elected to a second term as President of the Senate, marking the first time a woman won re-election to head that legislative body. She previously served as President of the Senate from 2002 to 2007, and succeeded Lynn Holowesko, who served as President of the Senate from 2007 to 2012.

text: K. Forbes Smith was elected the new President of the Senate on May 24,2017.

text: Legislative functions[edit]

text: Parliament is empowered by Article 52(1) of the Constitution to make laws for the peace, order and good government of The Bahamas. The Constitution also empowers Parliament to:

text:
determine the privileges, immunities, powers, and procedures of both the Senate and the House of Assembly;
alter or amend any of the provisions of the constitution;
prescribe the officers who are to constitute the personal staff of the Governor-General;
prescribe the number of Justices of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal; and
approve the Government's budget.[4]

text: Parliament also maintains oversight of the Government's finances through the Public Accounts Committee. Parliament is also the forum where public policy and matters of national importance are debated.

text: Legislative procedure[edit]

text: Most of the laws passed by Parliament are for the modification or amendment of existing laws.

text: Article 52(2) of the Constitution empowers Parliament to make laws by the passing of a bill. Most bills are introduced into Parliament by a Government minister,[citation needed] but in principle any parliamentarian may introduce a bill. A bill must be passed by both the House of Assembly and Senate, and then must be formally assented to by the Governor-General, before it becomes law.

text: There are currently four main classifications of Bills: public, money, private member, and private bills.

text: A bill must pass through a series of stages in order to be passed by each[citation needed] chamber, with a vote taken at each stage. The procedure in the House of Assembly is as follows:[5]

text:
A bill is formally introduced into Parliament at the first reading; this stage is generally a formality, with the bill's long title being read out and the presiding officer placing the motion without debate. After the first reading, the Speaker orders the bill to be printed; it is then numbered, circulated to members of Parliament, and made available to the public.
At the second reading, the principle of the bill is debated.
At the committal stage, the entire House of Assembly sits as a Committee of the Whole House, with the Speaker leaving the chair and the Deputy Speaker presiding as Chairperson. During this stage the bill is examined clause by clause, with detailed amendments considered. After the bill has been dealt with in Committee, the Chairperson formally reports to the Speaker the outcome of the Committee's deliberations, including what amendments have been made.
The third reading is the final stage; the motion made by the Speaker for the third reading is usually agreed to without debate. Once a bill has had its third reading, the Speaker orders the bill passed, and instructs the Chief Clerk to take the bill to the Senate for its consideration.

tag: ol

text: Each Bill consists of five main parts: the long title, the short title, the interpretation clause, the main body of the Bill and the objects and reasons. The long title is a description of the nature of the Bill and covers the intent of the Bill. The Short title follows the long title and labels the Bill for identification purposes. The short title sometimes also, contains the commencement clause, which states when the Bill will have legal force. The short title in turn is followed by the interpretation clause, which defines certain words and phrases used in the Bill. The body of the Bill consists of all of the other clauses, which contain the provisions of the Bill, that is, they contain all of the measures that the Bill is enacting. The objects and reasons is the final part of a Bill and it seeks to explain in layman’s terms the purpose of the Bill and the reason why it is necessary.

text: Members[edit]

text:
List of members of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 2002–2007
[[List of members of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 2007–2012]
List of members of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 2012–2017
List of current members of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas


document_title: List of This Is Us characters

question_text: who plays kate pearson's mom on this is us

question_tokens: who plays kate pearson 's mom on this is us

text: List of This Is Us characters

text: Main characters[edit]

text: Jack Pearson[edit]

text: Jack Pearson (born August 31, 1944–died 1996 or 1997), portrayed by Milo Ventimiglia, is Rebecca's husband, and the father of Kate, Kevin, and Randall.[2] Jack had a brother named Nick.

text: Jack had a rough childhood because of his abusive, alcoholic father Stanley Pearson, causing them to have a strained relationship. Stanley did not know that Jack was married, so when Jack found out that he and Rebecca were expecting triplets, he went to his father asking for money, citing gambling debts, rather than telling him that he intended to buy a house for his family. When Stanley was in the nursing home dying, he met Rebecca and his granddaughter Kate for the first time. Jack was camping with Kevin and Randall when Rebecca contacted him about his father dying, but Jack refused to see him.[3]

text: Jack was drafted into the Army at age 25; he served in the Vietnam War as a mechanic.[4][5] When Jack took Randall to Washington, D.C. on a college tour to Howard University, he then took Randall to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and told him about being drafted and how the war affected him; this may have been the first time that Jack shared about his Vietnam experiences to a member of the Pearson family (including Rebecca).[5][6]

text: After serving in the war, and working as a manual laborer, Jack became a construction foreman. When he wanted to buy the house for his family, he approached his boss and got a raise to $17,000 a year (equivalent to more than $49,000 in 2016), making him the highest paid foreman at the company.[7] He dreamed of opening his own firm, "Big Three Homes", but put his dreams on hold in order to provide a steady income for his children by getting a desk job.[8]

text: Two of the triplets (the third triplet was stillborn) and Randall (who was left at a fire station) were all born on Jack's 36th birthday.[2] Jack always wanted to find out who Randall's biological father was, and never knew that Rebecca had found him.[9]

text: Jack struggled with alcoholism while the children were young, but he stopped drinking to focus more on his family.[10] However, he relapsed into alcoholism when he had a drink after a fight due to a disagreement with his wife, who wanted to go on tour with a band with a member she'd once dated.[11] His drinking continued for some time until he decided to deal with the problem, at first by boxing, and then by attending AA meetings.[12] His sobriety and AA work continued for at least 6 months.[5]

text: Jack died while his children were in high school, and Kate keeps his ashes with her.[13][14] The exact cause of Jack's death has not yet been revealed, but the Pearson house is seen by Rebecca after being burnt in a fire.[15]

text: Rebecca Pearson[edit]

text: Rebecca Pearson née Malone (born 1950 or 1951), portrayed by Mandy Moore, is Jack's wife, and the mother of Kate, Kevin, and Randall.[2]

text: She strives to be a better mother to her children,[16] and has issues with Jack's alcoholism.[10] She has always known that William is Randall's father, but kept them apart as she was afraid that he would try to take Randall back.[9]

text: Rebecca always wanted to be a singer, but gave up on her dreams in order to focus on her family.[17] In the mid 1990s, she had a chance to become a singer again by joining a band with her ex-boyfriend. Jack was upset after finding out about their history, which caused a rift between Rebecca and Jack.[11]

text: About 8 years after Jack's death, Rebecca posted pictures of Tess, her new first grandbaby, on Facebook, then got a message from Jack's best friend, Miguel Rivas.[18] Rebecca later married Miguel.[10]

text: Randall Pearson[edit]

text: Randall Pearson (born August 31, 1980), portrayed by Sterling K. Brown (current day), Niles Fitch (age 15), and Lonnie Chavis (ages 8–10), is Jack and Rebecca's (adopted) son, and Kate and Kevin's brother.[2] On his 36th birthday, he found his biological father, William, and invited him to his northern New Jersey home.[2]

text: Randall worked at selling commodity futures based on weather patterns, and was shown to be successful and affluent.[8] However, after a nervous breakdown and some time off, he felt that his firm did not appreciate or respect him, and quit.[11][19]

text: On the day that Randall was born, he was dropped off in front of a firehouse by his biological father, William, and then taken to the hospital, where he was adopted by Jack and Rebecca.[2] Jack and Rebecca originally named him Kyle (the name they had intended for their third child, who was stillborn). Taking William's advice, Rebecca decided to give him his own name, naming him after William's favorite poet, Dudley Randall, although she refused to let William see Randall.[2][20] This allowed them to honor both their stillborn son's memory and Randall, rather than essentially replacing one son with the other.

text: At age nine, Randall’s teacher informed Jack and Rebecca that Randall was a gifted child who was not being challenged enough at his current school. They decided to remove him from public school and send him to Hanes Academy.[8] In high school Randall played football, wearing number 36.[17]

text: Randall and Kevin had an estranged relationship and didn't reconnect until they were 36 years old. At some points, Kevin openly despised Randall.[10] At a high school football game, where they played on opposing teams, they got in a fight.[17] However, there were also some moments when they acted like brothers.[3] (When they were 36, they got in a fight on the street in New York, but Kevin told onlookers they were brothers.)[17]

text: As an adult, Kevin was hurt that Randall didn't seem to care about his acting career.[17] They began to reconnect when Kevin needed Randall's advice, but Randall coldly told him he shouldn't care what he thinks. Eventually, Kevin moved to Randall's house in New Jersey, but they still had some work to do on building their relationship.[21] He loves Thanksgiving and has his family recreate a specific childhood Thanksgiving every year, including a 3.4 mile hike, watching Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and imitating a hotel owner known as "Pilgrim Rick".[22]

text: In season 2, Randall wanted to adopt a baby (to honor his father's legacy), but decided (with Beth's input) to foster an older child who may need help.[4][15] They fostered a 12-year old girl named Deja, whose mother Shauna was incarcerated. She showed signs of physical abuse, but Randall and Beth started to win her trust and get her to open up.[23][24][3] When the charges against Shauna were dropped, Deja went back home with her (over Randall's initial objections). Randall and Beth planned to try fostering again after some time.[5]

text: Kate Pearson[edit]

text: Kate Pearson (born August 31, 1980), portrayed by Chrissy Metz (current day), Hannah Zeile (age 15), and Mackenzie Hancsicsak (ages 8–10), is Jack and Rebecca's daughter, and Kevin and Randall's sister.[2]

text: Kate is obese and has struggled with issues of self-esteem her entire life, which she greatly attributes to her strained relationship with her mother and the death of her father.[2][19] Her relationship with her mother led to depression, for which she later took Prozac. She discontinued taking this drug due to the side effect of weight gain.[25]

text: Kate lives in Los Angeles and was her brother, Kevin's, personal assistant.[20] When Kevin decided to move to New York, he fired her in order to allow her to build her own life, apart from him.[21] She is an ardent Pittsburgh Steelers fan and has a routine where she watches the games with her dad's ashes.[13] At nine years old, she had her appendix removed on Christmas Eve.[25]

text: Kate decided to join a weight-loss support group, where she met Toby. Despite saying that she was not going to get involved with a fat person, she fell for Toby.[2] When Toby decided to not continue with his diet, Kate broke up with him and decided to go to Randall's for Thanksgiving. During a turbulent plane ride to New Jersey, Kate had an epiphany and decided to have gastric bypass surgery.[22] After consulting with a doctor, she instead decided to enter a fat camp to attempt to lose the weight without surgery.[14] When Toby surprised Kate by showing up at Randall's house for Christmas, he told her that he can live without pizza and junk food, but that he cannot live without her.[25] Toby collapsed from a heart attack, and was taken to the hospital.

text: After Toby's heart surgery, Kate and Toby decided to get engaged.[26] Kate later found out she was pregnant.[24] Kate and Toby announced their pregnancy to Kevin, and planned to get married at city hall, but then considered a big wedding.[27] But Kate lost the baby in a miscarriage.[28] Despite some struggle in their relationship after the miscarriage, Toby eventually came through for Kate.[28]

text: Kate had said that her father's death was her fault (although this claim has not been clarified or explained).[19]

text: Kevin Pearson[edit]

text: Kevin Pearson (born August 31, 1980), portrayed by Justin Hartley (current day), Logan Shroyer (age 15), and Parker Bates (ages 8–10), is Jack and Rebecca's son, and Kate and Randall's brother.[2]

text: Shortly before his tenth birthday, Kevin became attracted to Kate's best friend, Sophie, whom he married when they were older. Kevin and Sophie decided that she would stay in New York and he would move to California to pursue acting, believing that their marriage could handle the distance. Kevin and Sophie later divorced, 12 years prior to season 1, due to the distance and Kevin cheating on her.[14][29]

text: Kevin has always struggled with worrying about what people think of him, which caused him to have a strained relationship with Randall as they grew up.[10] Kevin was visibly envious of Randall, who had always excelled in everything and received more attention from their parents, but he didn't realize that Randall has longed for the same attention from him. In high school he played football, as a quarterback, wearing number twelve one year and number one the next[17][30] (His number one jersey was on display with Kevin's trophies when he visited the high school at age 37, for an alumni celebration.)[30] His goal of a football career ended when his knee was injured from a tackle during a game.[30]

text: Kevin was an actor in Los Angeles, starring as the lead on a long-running sitcom called The Manny, a sitcom in the tradition of Who's the Boss and The Nanny. He abruptly quit that show on his 36th birthday, criticizing the script quality, the producer's reluctance to add nuance to the show, and the audience.[2] After quitting his job, Kevin decided to move to New York to pursue a career as a serious stage actor on Broadway.[21] Upon arriving in New York, he got hired as the lead role, David, in Back of an Egg, opposite a cynical actress named Olivia Maine (who thought Kevin did not have the ability, but that Kevin was hired because his being "The Manny" would sell tickets).[21]

text: When Kevin had trouble connecting with the emotions needed for his role, he began spending time with Olivia, who tried to get him to connect with his feelings.[8] Kevin and Olivia briefly dated, but broke up after she brought her ex-boyfriend to the Pearson family cabin.[9] After his breakup with Olivia, Kevin began dating the writer of the play, Sloane Sandburg, attending Hanukkah with her family and inviting her to the Christmas Eve party at Randall's house.[25]

text: Sloane took over as the lead of the play when Olivia disappeared and the play was at risk. Kevin decided to self-fund the performance, in order to save it.[7] After Kevin and Sloane broke up, he reconnected with Sophie and began a relationship with her again.[14][19]

text: Director Ron Howard saw Kevin's play and had him cast in a war movie.[19] Kevin had trouble with his lines when he could not focus after, when Kate (visiting the set) talked with costar Sylvester Stallone about her dad, Stallone talked to Kevin about his dad. Kevin also reinjured his knee (that was injured from football) during an explosion on the set.[23]

text: As a result of the injury, Kevin became addicted to pain medication and alcohol, and allowed his relationship with Sophie to deteriorate.[27] One day after a brief visit with Randall, Kevin was speeding down a road, unaware that Tess was hiding in the back seat; Kevin was pulled over and charged with DUI, and Randall and Beth became angry with Kevin for endangering Tess.[5]

text: Beth Pearson[edit]

text: Beth Pearson, portrayed by Susan Kelechi Watson, is Randall's wife, whom he met in college and later married, circa 1999. The couple has two daughters, Annie and Tess.[10] Their marriage is based on honesty where they make an effort not to have secrets from one another. William revealed to Beth that he had met and communicated with Rebecca. This caused Beth to give Rebecca an ultimatum: to either tell Randall or she would. Growing up, Beth lived in a three-bedroom house with 14 other people.[17] After Randall quit his job, Beth took a job so Randall could be a stay-at-home dad.[15]

text: Toby Damon[edit]

text: Toby Damon, portrayed by Chris Sullivan. is Kate's fiancé.[26] Toby was born in Palm Springs, California.[7] Toby began dating Kate after they met at a weight-loss support group.[2] Toby is confident with his own body although obese, and encourages Kate to have better self-esteem. He was previously married to a woman whom Kate views as beautiful and successful, but who treated him badly. Toby gained 90 pounds in the first year after his divorce.[21]

text: Refusing to take Kate's hesitance about the relationship lightly, Toby has continually come up with sweet gestures to win her over.[20] In the beginning, he felt that he had to compete with Kevin for Kate's attention.[20] Despite breaking his weight-loss goals, Toby decided dieting was not for him and went off his diet, resulting in Kate breaking up with him.[9] He surprised Kate by showing up at Randall's house for Christmas Eve, stating that he could live without pizza and junk food, but that he could not live without her.[25] On Christmas Eve, Toby collapsed and ended up in the hospital with an arrhythmia.[7] After Toby's heart surgery, he and Kate decided to get engaged.[26]

text: William Hill[edit]

text: William H. "Shakespeare" Hill (died 2017), portrayed by Ron Cephas Jones (recent days) and Jermel Nakia (as a young adult), was Randall's biological father.[20]

text: William was a recovering drug addict who was suffering from terminal stage-four stomach cancer in the present.[21] He grew up in Memphis,[14] and after his mother moved to Pittsburgh he stayed in Memphis to play in his cousin Ricky's band, where he played piano, wrote, and sang.[31] William left the band, with the intention of returning, to care for his dying mother. However, after meeting Randall's mother and becoming a drug addict, he never returned.[31] He got clean after he thought he saw a monkey on the streets, realizing that nothing good comes from a person being on the street at 3:30 am. (He also stayed clean for years after being told by a judge, who offered to help him after his first conviction, to picture the judge's face when he was tempted to do the wrong thing.)[27] William returned to Philadelphia to attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, hoping to find and reconnect with his former lover Jessie[25]

text: After leaving Randall at the firehouse, he waited outside the hospital to see him being taken home by Jack and Rebecca. Rebecca realized that William was Randall's father, after seeing him getting onto the bus as she left the hospital. She eventually tracked him down,[10] a secret she kept from everyone, including Randall and Jack.[9]

text: William always wanted to have a relationship with his child,[9] but promised Rebecca he would stay away for Randall's benefit.[20] He accidentally revealed this secret to Beth one night when they got high together,[17] and Randall accidentally found out himself, when he found a letter and photo in William's apartment, from Rebecca, while looking for cassette tapes.[22] (William also told Randall about the second time William saw Rebecca; he took a cab to follow her home, hoping he could be in Randall's life, but when he was outside the house, he thought better of it.)[5]

text: William was bisexual, previously having a relationship with a man, Jessie, with whom he never officially broke up. Jessie assumed William had died when he vanished one night (the night William moved in with Randall's family).[25] William eventually succumbed to his cancer during a road trip back to Memphis with Randall.[31] Prior to his death he left a letter to Randall's girls, asking them to plan a fun memorial for him. He also sent Beth a postcard from Memphis, saying goodbye and calling her the daughter he never had.[19]

text: Miguel Rivas[edit]

text: Miguel Rivas, portrayed by Jon Huertas, was Jack's best friend and is Rebecca's second husband. Miguel was originally married to Shelly, before they divorced.[29] While it originally seemed that his marriage to Rebecca happened shortly after Jack's death, in season 2 it is clarified that the two did not get together until at least eight years after Jack's passing. Miguel was initially disliked by Kevin, until Miguel told Kevin how much he is like his father.

text: Sophie[edit]

text: Sophie, portrayed by Alexandra Breckenridge (modern day), Amanda Leighton (age 15), and Sophia Coto (age 10), was Kate's childhood best friend and Kevin's childhood love and his ex-wife. Kevin moved to New York and reconciled with her, after his relationships with Olivia and Sloane ended.[14][19] Their relationship initially survived the distance when Kevin was in his movie in L.A., but Kevin broke up with Sophie, admitting that his painkiller and alcohol addictions were out of control and he couldn't be the man that he wanted to be for her.[27]

text: Tess Pearson[edit]

text: Tess Pearson, portrayed by Eris Baker, is Randall and Beth's older daughter. She was promoted to series regular in season two.[32] She was named after the Tessana ceiling fan Randall was going to purchase when hearing about Beth going into labor.[18] Although not noticed acting out previously, she hid in her uncle Kevin's car (claiming she hates it at her house), when he was pulled over for speeding and charged with DUI.[5]

text: Annie Pearson[edit]

text: Annie Pearson, portrayed by Faithe Herman, is Randall and Beth's younger daughter. She was also promoted to series regular in season two.[32] On William's first night at Randall's family's house, when William wanted to step out, Annie convinced William that he might be happy if he stayed. [23]

text: Recurring characters[edit]

text: Introduced in season one[edit]

text: Gerald McRaney as Dr. Nathan Katowski (aka "Dr. K"): An elderly widower, who delivered Kate and Kevin.

text: Janet Montgomery as Olivia Maine: Kevin's former stage partner and ex-girlfriend.

text: Milana Vayntrub as Sloane Sandburg: Kevin's stage partner and ex-girlfriend.

text: Ryan Michelle Bathe as Yvette: A family friend of the Pearsons.

text: Denis O'Hare as Jessie: William's friend and former lover.

text: Adam Bartley as Duke: The stable worker at the weight-loss camp Kate attended.

text: Jill Johnson as Laurie: A member of Toby and Kate's weight-loss support group.[2]

text: Peter Onorati as Stanley Pearson: Jack's father. Jack had a strained relationship with Stanley, who was alcoholic and abusive.[7][4] When Stanley was dying, Jack did not want to see him.[3]

text: Hari Dhillon as Sanjay Jahiri: Randall's newer coworker who was given much of Randall's client base before Randall had his nervous breakdown.[11]

text: Caitlin Thompson as Madison: Member of Kate's support group, although Kate doesn't think Madison has the issues the rest of them have. In a season two episode, after Kate criticized Madison in group, she accidentally bumped into Madison's vehicle; Kate ended up telling her she's pregnant, so Madison was the first to hear about Kate's pregnancy.[3]

text: Introduced in season two[edit]

text: Lyric Ross as Deja: Randall and Beth's foster child while her mother was incarcerated.[33]

text: Guest stars[edit]

text: The following is a supplementary list of guest stars, some recurring, who appear in lesser roles. The characters are listed, in alphabetical order by actor, by the season in which they first appeared.

text: Introduced in season one[edit]

text:
Wynn Everett as Shelly: Miguel's wife.
Brad Garrett as Wes Manning: A television network president tasked with negotiating Kevin's exit from The Manny.
Jami Gertz as Marin Rosenthal: A woman who hired Kate to be an event coordinator.
Ron Howard as himself: After Howard saw Kevin's play, he called Kevin to praise his performance and offered to send him a script for a new movie he was producing.
Mario Lopez as himself: Lopez was hosting a talk show discussing Kevin's on-set meltdown.
Seth Meyers as himself: Meyers saw Kevin and Randall fighting on a New York City sidewalk and approached the pair, recognizing Kevin as a showbiz colleague.
Elizabeth Perkins as Janet Malone: Rebecca's overbearing mother.
Katey Sagal as Lanie Schulz: Kevin's Hollywood agent.
Jimmi Simpson as Andy Fannan: A co-worker whom Randall talked out of committing suicide on Christmas Eve.
Alan Thicke as himself: Thicke was guest-starring on The Manny when Kevin had his on-set meltdown.

text: Introduced in season two[edit]

text:
Debra Jo Rupp as Linda: A social worker who worked with Randall and Beth Pearson when they fostered Deja.[34]
Sylvester Stallone as himself: Actor in a movie Kevin was cast in.[35]