Acronyms When Writing In Cursive

[papabear16]

As I was making notes at work today, this question crossed my mind.

 

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3714/8963901204_93b7a7665f_b.jpg

2013-06-05 by papabear163, on Flickr

 

[The Good Captain]

As far as I'm concerned, acronyms are best done in upper-case letters (printed 'capitals') only. Out of interest, I didn't know that TWSBI was an acronym. NATO is.

[papabear16]

You know, I think I saw on its site that TWSBI is an acronym, but I'm not absolutely certain. But, yes, I'm referring to things like NATO (or in my legal life, UCC, MCL, USC, etc.).

 

I've always tended to print those in block capitals.

[thang1thang2]

I honestly print my acronyms in block-caps letters for legibility. Signatures (H.G. Wells, for example) should be done in full elaboration, as they're proper name abbreviations, but acronyms are simply the shortening of a sentence.

 

In "proper" english, UCC (upper community college, for me) would be done with the full elaborate capitals since it's proper names, however since we don't really write with full proper english, and especially not all the time, I wouldn't worry about that. If it's a name, leave it as elaborate capitals; all else, resort to block-caps. It just looks cleaner to me.

 

By "block-caps" I wish to define that as a legible system of full capital letters. This could be roman caps, italic caps, or even black letter style of caps or german text, etc. Anything which one could read a full "word" of caps in legibly without having it disturb the flow of the text would be fine. (It would be odd to see fine light spencerian and then huge heavy german text every time you wanted to abbreviate "nato" no? In that situation, I would rather use light monoline business caps, further simplified, or perhaps roman caps, etc, nothing requiring a broad edged nib as the contrast would be too heavy. On the other hand, full sized engravers text wouldn't look horribly out of place with german text)

[Redonna]

Never really thought much about it, but having thought for a moment just now I would say that, personally, I think acronyms, as well as initial only names such as TWSBI, CIA, SST etc., are best done in printed upper-case letters.

[RMN]

My capitalls usually aren't that fancy, so I can use the same in writing as in acronyms.

 

D.ick

[papabear16]

I hadn't thought about the issue of initials—H.G. Wells, for example—but now that I think about it, I've always done those in script. Interesting how most of us have gravitated to the same system.

That said, I don't recall encountering this issue in a formal letter I was writing by hand. If that came up, I'd be more tempted to use script capitals. I'd probably look up this "proper" English thang1thang2 mentioned. For my notes, the print capitals work just fine.

[thedeacon]

Like most I use capital black lettering for acronyms. It just feels right for some reason. As for proper names, i.e. H.G. Wells, script seems appropriate. FYI; here's a link explaining TWSBI's name. It is an acronym.

 

http://www.twsbi.com/cms.php?id_cms=4

[Runnin_Ute]

I mostly use what I used to call my normal handwriting. Just caps for something like CIA, NCIS, FBI, TWSBI, although on occasion I have been known to do it in cursive - just for giggles.

[legume]

Like the others, I use printed capitals for acronyms unless the letters are standalone. For H.G. Wells, the H and G would be written in regular cursive but if I were writing just his initials, HGW, it would be printed.

[papabear16]

Like the others, I use printed capitals for acronyms unless the letters are standalone. For H.G. Wells, the H and G would be written in regular cursive but if I were writing just his initials, HGW, it would be printed.

 

Now that you mention that, I'd do exactly the same thing (and regularly do in my notes). But that's certain inconsistent. Huh. Apparently consistency isn't everything.

[Redonna]

Agreed, I too would use cursive for the initials of a persons name when used with a surname such as H.G. Wells but I would use upper-case print for all initials if no part of the name is being spelled out.

[Paddler]

In college, most of my courses were in the hard sciences and math. Following that, I was an electronics tech and a technical writer. During that time, I totally quit using cursive writing. It was all block printing, upper and lower case. Cursive would have been just impossible to use. Now that I have begun to write stories in real English, I use cursive. Acronyms and some abbreviations still get block printing when these aid legibility.

 

[pmhudepo]

I tend to print acronyms. As a software developer, I run into acronyms quite often and if I try anything fancy when writing, say, HTML, it just isn't very legible.

[Ernst Bitterman]

I'll also lapse into block capitals in the acronym department, and stick to cursive for initials (although J.R.R. Tolkien might see an adjustment to the policy). I find that when there's more than a couple of cursive capitals together, my writing tends to look ridiculous. I also don't think there's a CORRECT answer to this; it's one of those subjective things.

[Lyander0012]

Much as I enjoy presenting things from an alternative point of view, I'll have to agree with everyone else here and say that acronyms are best written in block uppercase letters; anything else would just look... well, untidy, I suppose.

[GabrielleDuVent]

The cursive capitals have too much flourish to be used successively for me, unless there are periods or spaces in between (R L Stevenson, for instance). I usually use capital uppercase blocks, but they are written smaller than my cursive capitals, so they are in line with cursive lowercases.

 

But it's all up to the aesthetics, I think.

[Vendome]

Although I use cursive on letters and envelopes I do block print acronyms.

For postcodes, I write mine in cursive on my letters. But, on envelopes I again use block print, just so the postal scanning machines can read it OK.

[N2theBreach]

Another vote for block capitals. I think they are more legible than a string of cursive. An acronym in cursive just doesn't look right to me. Hmmm...Maybe it's because cursive pre-dates acronyms?