Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam.
In today's lesson we're going to look at a bit of business writing,
and more specifically, we're going to look at abbreviations and acronyms.
But before I even start, I want you to understand that a lot of what you're going to see today
applies in many situations outside of business, but I'll explain those when we get to them.
So, first of all: What's the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym?
An "abbreviation" is a shortening of a word. Okay? It's one word that we cut out a bunch of letters and
we make it shorter. So, for example, the abbreviation of the word "abbreviation" is "abbr." Okay?
"Acronyms", on the other hand, are basically initials.
Initials means the first letter
of each word. And initials we usually use with people's names, like John Smith, his
initials are JS. But when we want to take a bunch of words and we don't want to write
all these words, we just want to make something short, but it has to be understood by basically
whoever is going to read it, then we're going to use acronyms. Okay?
So, let's start with the abbreviations, and in terms of business. Now, especially when
we're writing, either a letter by hand like on paper or an email, these are very common.
"Attn:" means: Who are you writing to? So, "attention".
Whose attention are you trying to get with this letter? "Re:" means "regarding",
means: About what? Now, a lot of people might
think that "re:" in an email means "reply", it doesn't. "Re:" in an email or a letter
always means "regarding". What is the topic of the conversation? So, you know in the email
bar it has "re:", what are you talking about when you reply to somebody? The topic. Okay?
Next, when we end our letter, we should say who we are and what our position is in the
company. So, whether you're the Assistant or the Director, you can write: "Asst.", "Dir."
or "Director", or Manager: "Mgr." Notice that all three of them have a capital. So, it doesn't
matter if you're using the full word or an abbreviation, you still have to capitalize
the title of a position, or the title of the person's place in the company. Okay? So, if
you're the Assistant Director, you write: "Asst. Dir."
Now, you're wondering why there's no dot here, and there is a dot there. There's a few ways
to figure out which one to use, yes or no on the dot. Firstly, the more you read and
the more you engage in this sort of writing, you will just see: What is the most common
approach? But another way is a style guide. You can use The Chicago Manual of Style, that's
the most common one for general purposes. Or if your company has its own style guide
or a style sheet, look at it to see if they want a dot or they don't want the dot. It's
really a personal choice of the company's. Okay?
So, now, the main thing we have to consider is when we're writing something from the company,
we're writing it on company stationery. So, the company has pages with a letterhead. It
means all the information is already at the top; the name, the logo, the address, etc.
So, all of this stuff might already be included, for example: which department, which building
you're in, for example, in the address. We always like to take shortcuts, and we don't
want to write everything. Write it short. "dept." is enough. Everybody knows "dept."
means department. Building is building: "bldg." because we just want to shorten everything.
The less, the better. When you end it, you're writing your name, and underneath: Who are
you? Like, okay, I know your name, but who are you in terms of the company? So, you're
writing your position. Now, you can see all this stuff on business cards, letterheads, etc.
So, next, let's look at acronyms. So, if you watched Rebecca's lesson on business acronyms,
you heard about Chief Executive Officer, "CEO", this is the boss of the company, he runs or
she runs the whole company. Everybody answers to him or her. So, "CO" basically means Chief
Officer, "Executive" means of the whole company, but then you have different departments or
different areas of the company. "CFO", Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer,
Chief Information Officer, and then there's many other ones that you can use.
So, now we're going to look at some more acronyms. One thing to remember: Acronyms always use
capital letters. Even if you don't need capitals in the extended version, the acronym will
always be capital letters. "ETA", estimated time of arrival. So, you call a delivery person
or you call a client and you want to inform them or you want to find out when the product
will arrive, so you say... I call Amazon, my book hasn't arrived yet, and I say:
"What's the ETA on my book?" And they write back: "Oh, it will be there sometime next week."
Or I need to contact somebody and get some things done, and I call the local place, and
they say: "Oh, sorry, we can't help you. You have to call HQ." Headquarters, the main office.
It will probably be capitalized even in the extension, but not the "q", notice, because it's one word.
"MSRP". So, now, when we're talking about big ticket items, like cars, computers, appliances,
then we want to know how much it costs. So, what you are paying the store might not necessarily
be the MSRP, because the stores want to make it more competitive.
The MSRP is the manufacturer's suggested retail price.
So, the company that made the product tells the stores and tells
the distributors: "Oh, you should sell this for $100." Okay? That's what it's... That's
what you can get for it. But then the stores, they want to compete with other stores, so
they go: "We will beat the MSRP by 10%. We will go under the manufacturer's price." Okay?
"POS", point of sale. So then you go into a store, you find the product you like, you
want to go pay for it. The cash register, the machine where you actually pay or put
your card, or whatever, that's called the POS, the point of sale. Okay? "SOP", so now
you've bought your product, you take it home, and you try to use it and realize:
"You know what? This is not really good. This is not what I paid for." So you call the company,
you say: "I want to return this. Can I just take it back to the store?" And the person
on the phone says: "No, I'm sorry, sir, that's not our SOP. You have to do it this steps.
You have to go A, B, C, and then get back to HQ." "SOP", standard operating procedure.
Basically: How do we do this? How is it done? How is the...? What is the policy?
Now, you're working at the store and you get your paycheque, and on your paycheque it shows
how much this cheque is for, what is your pay for this term, maybe two weeks, one month,
etc. And next to it, it will say "year-to-date". How much have you received so far from the
beginning of the fiscal year until now? "Year-to-date". But notice that we have the hyphens, so technically,
this is like one word, but we still have an acronym for it. Year-to-date. Then you take
all your financial information, and you go talk to your CPA about doing your taxes, for
example. Your Chartered Public Accountant. This is an accountant who is recognized by
the government, he... He or she has a license, and they can sign off and do your taxes, personal
or corporate, etc.
Now, the thing to remember is that a lot of this stuff is not only used in business. People
use ETA all the time. So, especially when we're texting because, you know, texting uses
a lot of acronyms, a lot of abbreviations because people don't like to type too much.
So I'm typing my friend, he's supposed to come over for... To hang out tonight, and
he didn't come, he hasn't come yet. So I say: "Hey. What's your ETA?" I don't write:
"When do you think you will show up?" I say: "What's your ETA?"
And he understands estimated time
of arrival: When are you coming? When will you be here? Okay? "SOP" is another one we
use in many situations. The "SOP" means how something is done. And again, all of these
are used for addresses, for business situations, for non-business situations, etc. So it's
important to learn these. And again, the more you actually get involved in writing and reading
business situations or other situations, you will see these all the time and eventually
you will remember how to use them. Okay?
So, I hope this was pretty clear.
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Bye.