Editing Abbreviation (section)

==== United Kingdom ====

Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation:
* For the sake of convenience, many British publications, including the [[BBC]] and ''[[The Guardian]]'', have completely done away with the use of periods in all abbreviations. These include:
** Social titles, e.g. Ms or Mr (though these would usually have not had periods—see above) Capt, Prof, ''etc.;''
** Two-letter abbreviations for countries (''"US"'', not ''"U.S."'');
** Abbreviations beyond three letters (full caps for all except initialisms{{clarify|date=November 2015}});
** Words seldom abbreviated with lower case letters (''"PR"'', instead of ''"p.r."'', or ''"pr"'')
** Names (''"FW de Klerk"'', ''"GB Whiteley"'', ''"Park JS"''). A notable exception is ''[[The Economist]]'' which writes ''"Mr F. W. de Klerk"''.
** Scientific units (see Measurements below).
* Acronyms are often referred to with only the first letter of the abbreviation capitalized. For instance, the [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] can be abbreviated as ''"Nato"'' or ''"NATO"'', and [[Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome]] as ''"Sars"'' or ''"SARS"'' (compare with ''"[[laser]]"'' which has made the full transition to an English word and is rarely capitalised at all).
* Initialisms are always written in capitals; for example the ''"British Broadcasting Corporation"'' is abbreviated to ''"BBC"'', never ''"Bbc"''. An initialism is also an acronym but is not pronounced as a word.
* When abbreviating scientific units, no space is added between the number and unit (<nowiki>100mph, 100m, 10cm, 10°C</nowiki>). (This is contrary to the SI standard; see below.)