Words or initials first?

I've started to doubt a rule I was taught about abbreviations.

The rule is to write the term in full the first time it appears, put the abbreviation in brackets, then use the abbreviation from there on.

Take IFRS. Every accountant knows the initials. Few would write out the full name, and nobody needs it. Writing International Financial Reporting Standards first makes the reader wade through four words to reach a label they already recognise.

The alternative is to reverse the rule and write IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) the first time we use it. The reader who knows the term reads straight on. The reader who doesn't finds the meaning right there.

So which is better?

What the evidence says

Nothing directly. I could find no study that compares "term (ABC)" with "ABC (term)". The choice rests on how people read.

Two principles favour the conventional order. First, meaning should come before the label. Read "medium-term financial strategy (MTFS)" and you understand the concept, then learn its shorthand. Read "MTFS (medium-term financial strategy)" and you meet four letters that mean nothing, then they are explained.

Second, brackets tell readers the contents are optional, and readers skim them. If the explanation sits in brackets, the reader who most needs it may skip it. The label can afford to be skimmed. The meaning cannot.

My case for reversing the order relies on that same skimming. If the explanation is optional, the reader who already knows the term can pass over it. That holds only when most readers do already know it.

The test

Ask which form your reader knows better.

Some initials are better known than the words they stand for. VAT and NHS need no explanation for a UK reader. IFRS needs none for an accountant, and IPSAS needs none for a public sector accountant, though both would need to be spelled out for a general reader. Lead with the initials, and add the full term in brackets only if some readers might not know it.

Some initials have replaced the words altogether. Nobody needs pdf or BBC spelled out, and spelling them out would distract more readers than it helped. Abbreviations like that can be used without a definition.

Other abbreviations were coined for the document you are writing, or by the organisation that produced it. The reader has never seen them before and those need the words first.

In the reports I read, most abbreviations are the second kind. So the rule I was taught is right more often than my doubt was.

This is the test we already apply to jargon. A technical term helps the reader who knows it and shuts out the reader who doesn't. Abbreviations are jargon in shorthand, and they deserve the same scrutiny.

The bigger question

The order matters less than whether to abbreviate at all.

Hales, Williams and Rector (2017) found that abbreviations reduce comprehension, partly because readers forget what they stand for. A definition on page 2 does little for someone reading page 14.

Abbreviations often serve the writer more than the reader. They save typing and make a paragraph look shorter. Neither helps the person trying to understand it. A finance report that opens with a glossary of abbreviations has usually been written for its author.

VFM is a good example. Finance readers know it, but every reader knows value for money. The words are better known and barely longer than the abbreviation, so the initials replace three plain words with a piece of code for no benefit to the reader.

Before you abbreviate a word or phrase, count how many times it appears in your document.

• If the term appears only a few times, or the uses are far apart, write it in full each time.
• If it appears often and close together, repeating a long term is heavy. Use a short generic noun if possible: "the strategy", "the standards", "the fund". Define an abbreviation only if that fails.
• If readers will meet the initials elsewhere, define them anyway. Someone reading about PEFA will see the initials in assessment reports, hear them in meetings and type them into a search engine. They need the link between the letters and the meaning.
• In long documents, define the abbreviation again at the start of each major section or chapter. Few readers go from the first page to the last, so many never see the first definition.
• In tables, charts and headings, space is short, so abbreviate. Define the term nearby or in a note.

So which comes first?

The rule I was taught is right for most abbreviations, because most are coined for the document and the reader has never seen them. My doubt is right for the few that readers know better than the words, such as IFRS. A handful, like pdf, need no definition at all.

The more useful question is whether the reader needs the initials at all, and the answer is usually no.