Acronyms and Spelled-out Forms

Acronyms and abbreviations, especially short ones, tend to be ambiguous and be used to refer to multiple spelled-out forms.

E.g.: CSP may stand for Cloud Service Provider and Credential Service Provider.

For this reason, definitions should favorably be provided under the spelled-out forms.

Acronym and abbreviation dictionary entries should be based on the Acronym Template that uses a simplified structure to disambiguate acronyms. This increases readability and prevents the situation where the same dictionary entry refers to multiple distinct terms.

Spelled-out form dictionary entries should be based on the Term Template that uses an extended structure to provide concept definitions.

Sometimes, acronyms are better known and used than their spelled-out form. The spelled-out form may even be rarely known and sound awkward. And sometimes, the spelled-out form may be extremely lengthy. Thus, it is left to the dictionary entry author to decide when to rather provide definitions under the acronym entry rather than the spelled-out form entry, keeping in mind that readability and usability should be the key criteria.

For instance, for multiacronym expressions, it may be more readable to only spell-out part of the elements.

This example is more readable: AWS Access Control List.

This example is less readable: Amazon Web Services Access Control List.