Formatting Documents

Racial terminology: When there is a need to specify the “race” of persons, use “black”, “white” and “coloured” in relation to population groups, do not use capital letters; do not refer to people as “blacks”, “whites” and “coloureds”; rather say “the black person/s”, etc.; but for Indian person/s (proper noun) use upper case.

2.2 Abbreviations

An abbreviation is a shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole, such as Dr for Doctor; DHET for Department of Higher Education and Training; mm for millimetre.

Initialisms are abbreviations that are pronounced one letter at a time, such as CPUT; UN; kg Acronyms are abbreviations formed from the initials or sometimes syllables of the longer name or phrase, usually pronounced as words, such as UNESCO; NASA; AIDS Contractions are abbreviations that include the first and last letter of the singular, such as Mr = mister

Where abbreviations are used in text, unless for those used commonly, abbreviations must be written out in full on first appearance, followed directly by the abbreviation in brackets, e.g. the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). It should be assumed that the reader may not be familiar with all acronyms used, so as a courtesy and to prevent confusion, they should be expanded at first mention.

In British style, contractions should have no full stops (Mr, St, Jr, Revd, edn), and for the most part, full stops and spaces have been omitted in the CPUT Style Guide. Exceptions include ordinary small-letter abbreviations like: e.g.; etc.; no.; et al.

No full stops in titles like Prof, Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Rev, Profs, Revs; etc.; For “Professor” the preference at CPUT is for it to be abbreviated throughout as “Prof”.

Qualifications should be written without full stops or spaces: BA, BSc, MEd, PhD, DLitt, MPhil, etc.

Abbreviations, including those that are pronounced as words, should not be written with an apostrophe to denote the plural, e.g. VCs, MOUs, NGOs, etc.

Common Latin abbreviations are not written in italic, such as i.e., e.g., but et al. is italicised.

Note that when abbreviations that take a full stop are used to end a sentence, do not add another full stop to the end of the sentence.

Symbols are also sometimes used to denote words, like # for “number”, but preferably use “no.” as the abbreviated form; nos. for the plural.

Note that the choice of using “a” or “an” before an abbreviation is determined by the pronunciation and not the spelling of the word following the indefinite article. Use “an” before abbreviations beginning with a vowel sound, e.g. an MA; and an unaspirated “h”, e.g. an honours degree.

For abbreviations commonly used in the higher education environment, see pages 46–49 of this Guide.