historically, sometimes spawned a trend toward abbreviation. The standardization of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviation. At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like were replaced with For master and for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce their copy time. An example from the Oxford University Register, 1503 Mast? subwarden? y? m? de me to you. And wher? y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differr? thelection? ov? to qu? dena? tinitatis y have be thoug? t me syn? that itt woll be then? a bowte mydsom ?. In the 1830s in the United States, starting with Boston, abbreviation became a fad. For example, during the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very trendy. The use of abbreviation for the names of Father of modern etymology JRR Tolkien and his friend CS Lewis, and other members of the Oxford literary group known as the Inklings, are sometimes cited as symptomatic of this. Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence. After World War II, the British greatly reduced their use of the full stop and other punctuation points after abbreviations in at least semi-formal writing, while the Americans more readily kept such use until more recently, and still maintain it more than Britons. The classic example, considered by their American counterparts quite curious, was the maintenance of the internal comma in a British organization of secret agents called the Special Operations, Executive - Laquo; S.O., E - Which is not found in histories written after about 1960. But before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period only follows an abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent: M. is the abbreviation for monsieur while Mme is that for madame raquo ;. Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously. [Citation needed] Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. The US media tend to use periods in two-word abbreviations like United States (US), but not personal computer (PC) or television (TV). Many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations completely.Minimization of punctuation in typewritten matter became economically desirable in the 1960s and 1970s for the many users of carbon-film ribbons, since a period or comma consumed the same length of non-reusable expensive ribbon as did a capital letter.Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s allowed for a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant- and text messaging. SMS for instance supports message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set). This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated. More recently Twitter, a popular social network service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits. [1] interesting history of origin ofcertain abbreviations.Here are some examples:
? for lb (pound)
The abbreviation originates with the Latin phrase libra pondo, which means a unit of measurement by weight. The Romans shortened the phrase to pondo, which ultimately became pou nd in English, but the abbreviation of the first word - lb., for libra- endured. The symbol for British currency is a stylized L, or?, Which comes from the same source. The value of the British pound was originally equal to one pound of silver.
XmasChristians believe that the abbreviation is intended to take the Christ out Christmas or because of the letter s similarity to a cross. Be that as it may, the real origin of Xmas lies within the Greek language. The Greek word for Christ begins with the Greek letter chi, which is represented by a symbol similar to the letter X in the modern Roman alphabet. Therefore, Xmas is a completely allowable abbreviation that is almost as old as the Christian religion itself! Similarly a Christian could be referred to as an Xian .. IP...
