Abbreviations and Signs / A Primer of Information about Abbreviations and Signs, with Classified Lists of Those in Most Common Use

TYPOGRAPHIC TECHNICAL SERIES FOR APPRENTICES—PART VI, NO. 37
EDUCATIONAL DIRECTOR
UNITED TYPOTHETÆ OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION UNITED TYPOTHETAE OF AMERICA 1918
Copyright, 1918 United Typothetae of America Chicago, Ill.
The use of abbreviations and signs is often a convenience and sometimes a temptation. It is a saving of time and labor which is entirely justifiable under certain conditions, one of which is that all such short cuts should be sufficiently conventional and familiar to be intelligible to any person likely to read the printed matter in which they occur. Scientific and technical signs and abbreviations are part of the nomenclature of the subject to which they belong and must be learned by students of it. General readers are not particularly concerned with them.
The use of abbreviations and signs is partly a matter of office style and partly a matter of author's preference. Certain fairly well established rules have, however, emerged from the varieties of usage in vogue. An attempt has been made in the following pages to state these rules clearly and concisely and to illustrate their application.
Classified lists of the most common abbreviations and signs have been inserted and will be found useful for reference and practice. Sources of further information on these points will be found under the head of Supplementary Reading.

INTRODUCTION
The use of abbreviations is as old as the use of alphabets. In inscriptions and on coins and in other places where room is limited they have always been used in order to save space. The words GUILIELMUS QUARTUS DEI GRATIA REX BRITANNIARUM FIDEI DEFENSOR would hardly go around the circumference of a sixpence, three quarters of an inch in diameter. Therefore, we find them written GUILIELMUS IIII D: G: BRITANNIAR: REX F: D: In the manuscript period abbreviations were very extensively used. This was done partly to lighten the great labor of hand copying and partly to effect a double saving of expense, in labor and in costly material. Certain of these abbreviations were in common use and perfectly intelligible. Unfortunately the copyists did not limit their abbreviations to these, but devised others for their own use much to the discomfort of their readers, especially after the lapse of centuries.