{"id":13933,"date":"2011-12-25T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-25T19:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2011\/12\/25\/two-letter-abbreviations-with-.html"},"modified":"2011-12-25T11:31:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T19:31:00","slug":"two-letter-abbreviations-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2011\/12\/25\/two-letter-abbreviations-with\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-letter abbreviations with slashes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In English, most of our two-letter abbreviations are written as either two letters by themselves, or two letters with one or two periods.<\/p>\n

But there are a few that are written with a slash between the two letters.<\/p>\n

If anyone knows why that is, I'd be interested to find out more; TSOR hasn't turned anything up.<\/p>\n

But mostly I'm writing this 'cause I think it's an interesting phenomenon, and I wanted to put together a partial list.<\/p>\n

\n
c\/o<\/dt>\n
care of. This is the one I'm most familiar with and see (and use) most often.<\/dd>\n
l\/c<\/dt>\n
lowercase. As used by editors to suggest making a word lowercase. Also u\/c for “uppercase,” though I think I see that more rarely.<\/dd>\n
N\/A<\/dt>\n
not applicable. Almost always written in uppercase, unlike a lot of these. Another very common one.<\/dd>\n
w\/o<\/dt>\n
without. I'm particularly intrigued by the two-letter slash abbreviations for single words. Note that w\/ is often used for “with,” so I guess w\/o for “without” is a natural extension of that.<\/dd>\n
b\/c<\/dt>\n
because. I see this fairly often, but it's always seemed weird to me. Most two-letter abbreviations are short for a two-word phrase; even “without” could be thought of as “with” and “out.” But why would an abbreviation for “because” include the C? I suppose you could break up the word into “be” and “cause.”<\/dd>\n
w\/c<\/dt>\n
week commencing. I had never seen this before British members of the SH<\/cite> staff used it; I was initially sure it must be a typo, perhaps for w\/e, which I think I've occasionally seen as short for “week ending.” I'm guessing w\/c must be more common in the UK than in the US.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Wikipedia's discussion<\/a> includes such abbreviations as r\/w (“read\/write”) and i\/o (“input\/output”)—both of which I think I usually see in uppercase—but those seem to me to be in a different category, because the phrase they're abbreviating also contains a slash. In the abbreviations I'm talking about in this entry, it's not clear to me why the slash is there.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia also lists b\/w; I've certainly seen that meaning “black\/white,” which goes in the same category as r\/w, but Wikipedia says it's also used for “between,” which I don't think I've seen before. Urbandictionary backs that up<\/a> (and notes that it's used in text messaging); but then again, the first search result for [b\/w between] is a forum discussion<\/a> in which everyone but the original poster says that b\/w for “between” would be confusing.<\/p>\n

Which of course is a good reminder that there are presumably zillions of abbreviations that are used in some groups and subcultures without being known to society in general; hard to say where to draw the line. So I don't intend my list to be canonical or complete; just a sampling of some common ones I personally have encountered.<\/p>\n

Any other particularly common two-letter abbreviations with slashes?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In English, most of our two-letter abbreviations are written as either two letters by themselves, or two letters with one or two periods. But there are a few that are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acronyms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}