ABBREVIATIONS
How to avoid confusion without extra effort
What happens when your clients find abbreviations that they don't understand? Sometimes
they can figure it out from the context, but otherwise the work that you put into crafting
your message can be wrecked. To keep your reader focussed, you should ensure that every
abbreviation is defined when it's first used and you should provide a table of abbreviations
with your documents.
The trouble is that it requires a lot of work. First you have to locate each
abbreviation and then you need to find out whether that's the first usage. If it's the first
time it appears, the definition needs to be with that instance and not with the later ones.
It's a time-consuming task that requires painstaking attention to detail. However, if your
word processor could do it for you, readers would be guaranteed to understand the document
better without additional time spent proofreading.
PerfectIt is a downloadable program that works with Microsoft Word. Without any templates,
forms or markers, PerfectIt checks that abbreviations are:
- Presented consistently
- Defined in their first usage
- Defined only once
- Used after they are defined
PerfectIt can also generate a table of abbreviations automatically from your document.
When you're finished writing, just load PerfectIt. It will undertake all of the checking
and generate your table of abbreviations. You can learn more about PerfectIt's other
features, or to try PerfectIt for free, download it now.
