How do you handle abbreviations in dialogue

[8letters]

"I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."

In dialogue when people use abbreviations, do you put them in the dialogue as they are written. Or do you do something to indicate that the person said the letters "M", "B" and "A", then "O", "S" and "U"?

 

[Hypoxia]

I usually avoid abbreviations in dialogue. IMHO they're OK in narrative -- after being explained. Too many abbreviations are just too ambiguous. In one series I explicitly refer every time to a certain job position as Programming Assistant because PA is too easily interpreted as Personal Ass't, a totally different gig. OSU -- Is that Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Oaxaca, Okinawa? Those familiar with USA biz jargon will understand MBA, CIO and IT. Others won't. To old-timers, CIO is a labor union.

Using your example, I might write an exchange like:

"I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."
"Huh?"
Uncle Fred looked perplexed. He's so 1970's, I thought. I sighed silently.
"I graduated from a good school with a good degree and now I'm after a computer job."
"Well boy, why the fuck didn't you say so?"
Uncle Fred expectorated straight into the spittoon. Good shot, I thought.​

Dense abbreviations need translation. Don't assume anything.

 

[HeyAll]

"I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."

I don't see anything wrong with this sentence.

Readers are smart enough to understand abbreviations like that.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I don't see anything wrong with this sentence.

Readers are smart enough to understand abbreviations like that.

I agree. Acronyms are used all the time in media. USA, UN, NATO, NTSB, FBI, NYPD, CIA, EPA, BBC, NASA, SEC--most readers will instantly recognize every one of these. Even when some have more than one meaning, context reveals the true intent.

 

[sr71plt]

In U.S. style, full caps, without periods except in the following cases: abbreviations ending in a lowercase letter (e.g., i.e, etc., et al.--except these shouldn't normally be abbreviated in text anyway, except as OP notes, when they are voiced out in dialogue, but rendered "for example," "that is," "for example," "and so forth" or "etcetera," and "and others")--a.k.a., a.m., p.m., Ms., Dr.) and a few traditional variations you might run into, which will be in the dictionary, like U.S. for the adjective form of the United States (but it's UK) and the degree abbreviations PhD., M.A. (Chicago Manual of Style 10.4)

 

[Handley_Page]

Quote: "I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."

I don't see anything wrong with this sentence.

Readers are smart enough to understand abbreviations like that.

Sorry, but :-
Spoken like a true citizen of the USA, for whom "Champion of the World" means their state, or something like it (for everyone knows nothing exists outside, does it.

The fact that you understood all of it may be praise-worthy, but we in the rest of the World might have a few problems with it.
And as I don't usually speak 'Managese' or 'Commersese':-
OSU ? "Osaka South University?" (or even "Oldham" ?)
CIO. ? Here I really must confess my ignorance: "Chief Instruction Officer" ?

So lets try and remember that there ARE other places in the Lit world where such abbreviations may not be properly understood, and do something about it.

 

[8letters]

Handley, if it makes you feel better, the line in my story is:

“We dated our senior years at OU”, said Rebecca. Rebecca had gone to the University of Oklahoma. “We split when we graduated and we haven’t kept in touch. This is amazing!”

I made up a dialogue line with four acronyms just to emphasize the issue.

CIO - Chief Information Officer. The person who reports to the CEO and is responsible for Information Technology (IT).

 

[Handley_Page]

"I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."

In dialogue when people use abbreviations, do you put them in the dialogue as they are written. Or do you do something to indicate that the person said the letters "M", "B" and "A", then "O", "S" and "U"?

This could be a UK/USA style difference, but I always have trouble with things like "interviewed with" (another example is "visited with"). To me that sounds like the CIO and the writer were interviewed together. To me, it might be better as:"
"I got an MBA from OSU then gained an interview with the CIO for an IT position."
(or "Was interviewed by . .").

 

[sr71plt]

Handley, if it makes you feel better, the line in my story is:

I made up a dialogue line with four acronyms just to emphasize the issue.

CIO - Chief Information Officer. The person who reports to the CEO and is responsible for Information Technology (IT).

The example is fine. Nearly all abbreviations/acronyms should be explained as the example does at least the first time they appear. In nonfiction, you'd put the acronym in parenthesis behind the expansion the first time it occurs and than can use it alone thereafter. Can't do this in fiction, though.

 

[tanyachrs]

If the person talking says the letters, then I show it as letters.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The example is fine. Nearly all abbreviations/acronyms should be explained as the example does at least the first time they appear. In nonfiction, you'd put the acronym in parenthesis behind the expansion the first time it occurs and than can use it alone thereafter. Can't do this in fiction, though.

I've seen editorial parentheses used the other way around in fiction, like so:

"Where'd you go to school?" Bob asked.
"Started out at SCEGGS [Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School - ed] then when I was fifteen I transferred to PLC [Pymble Ladies' College]."

Footnotes are another option, less intrusive than the above, but not well suited to Literotica.

 

[oggbashan]

Acronyms don't travel well.

For example if I used AA in real life speaking, or in a story, I would mean The Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous. If I meant the Alcoholics I was say the word in full.

Because I know that AA can cause confusion, my character is more likely to be a member of the RAC - Royal Automobile Club. The AA and the RAC provide roadside breakdown cover for their members.

At various stages in my real life career I acquired an increasing number of letters after my name to show my status as a member of professional and academic bodies.

If the group of letters started with 'A', I was an Associate or Candidate Member, not yet qualified for full membership, or perhaps qualified but not currently practising.

If the letters started with 'M', I was a full member.

If the letters started with 'F', I was a Fellow, a senior member with considerable status. The status was enhanced by the standing of the organisation. The Royal Society is arguably the highest, so FRS is a very important set of initials. There are other 'Royal' Societies, and being a Fellow of one of them shows recognised achievement in a specialised field.

BUT...

I wouldn't use those abbreviations in a story on Literotica because they only mean something in context in the UK (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)...

I could have done, in a recent story 'Long Holiday' but I didn't. I used the terms 'Professor' and 'Doctor' (PhD-type) to express the academic status because those are understood in almost every country.

 

[sr71plt]

I've seen editorial parentheses used the other way around in fiction, like so:



Footnotes are another option, less intrusive than the above, but not well suited to Literotica.

You probably have. Not in well-edited copy, though. Parenthetical takeouts are frowned on in fiction.

 

[Hypoxia]

Think of it like this: Abbreviations are jargon. Jargon sometimes goes mainstream, but doesn't necessarily stay there. BYTE MY BAUD may have been funny 30 years ago but is probably incomprehensible to most Anglophones now. Abbreviations like CIO can have many different meanings that even context can't explicate unless carefully constructed.

CIO may refer to:

Organizations

Central Imagery Office, a predecessor of the American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Office, the national intelligence agency of the former Republic of Vietnam
Central Intelligence Organisation, the national intelligence agency of Zimbabwe
Charitable incorporated organisation, a form of legal entity for non-profits in the United Kingdom
Congress of Industrial Organizations, a former American trade union federation (also known as the Committee of Industrial Organization)
International Olympic Committee (French: Comité international olympique)

Titles

Chairman-in-Office, is an official of a member state holding the presidency of an international organization
Chief information officer, the head of information technology
Chief innovation officer, the head of innovation, responsible for innovation management
Chief investment officer, the head of investments
Commonwealth Chairperson-in-Office, the Chairperson-in-Office of the Commonwealth of Nations

Other uses

Concurrent input/output, a feature in the JFS file system
"Cry it out", an aspect of the Ferber method for solving childhood sleep problems
CIO magazine
Conventional International Origin, a conventionally defined reference axis of the pole's average location

When using abbreviations or any other jargon, consider your audience and their contexts and familiarities. Don't mess their heads too much.

 

[Handley_Page]

Just for information, you understand, the term 'OU' in the UK (call it 'England') is understood to be referring to the "Open University", rather than some place in Oklahoma; or, for that matter, Oldham.

 

[Over_Red]

If the person talking says the letters, then I show it as letters.

Ditto.

 

[sr71plt]

If the person talking says the letters, then I show it as letters.

What? You've forgotten that you control what you characters say? Yes, if there's some significance in the use of the letters in and of themselves, that's what you do. Otherwise an author needs to be aware that dialogue in a story isn't the same thing as dialogue in real life. If you think so, then record someone talking, transcribe it, and then try to think of that being the way you'd write dialogue in a story.

 

[tanyachrs]

It's a balance, isn't it? To sound natural vs. be understandable. But my point was this: dialogue is written how the character says it. If the character says CIA, you write CIA. If the character says Central Intelligence Agency, you write Central Intelligence Agency. It's up to you to decide what the character says but you don't write one thing if the character said something else, not within dialogue.

 

[lovecraft68]

The words around the abbreviation can help. For Ogg''s example of AA for instance.

"Yeah, my old man was a a heavy drinker, but the last five years he's been in AA."

As for Universities...two things

1 If I mentioned early on the story is in Rhode Island and someone says "I'm going to URI" I think people can figure that out.

2- I don't have to know exactly.

If I am reading a story and a character says, "I graduated FSU two years ago" All I need to know is they graduated college why do I need to know exactly where?

Guess its like everything else, some people are anal with certain things and others aren't.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

"I got an MBA from OSU then interviewed with the CIO for an IT position."

In dialogue when people use abbreviations, do you put them in the dialogue as they are written. Or do you do something to indicate that the person said the letters "M", "B" and "A", then "O", "S" and "U"?

My characters are too busy screwing to get MBAs or want them, but in that sentence I'd use MBA as is, spell out OSU as Ohio State (and if that's not what you meant, you lose), translate CIO into something like high mucky-muck or big boss, and - no, this is going too far, none of my characters would stoop to a job in IT.

Lit has an international following. It can be useful to keep that in mind.

 

[sr71plt]

It's a balance, isn't it? To sound natural vs. be understandable. But my point was this: dialogue is written how the character says it. If the character says CIA, you write CIA. If the character says Central Intelligence Agency, you write Central Intelligence Agency. It's up to you to decide what the character says but you don't write one thing if the character said something else, not within dialogue.

The character didn't say it; you wrote the character saying it. And the character doesn't have this fictional responsibility thing of keeping the reader with you. You do. It's fiction writing, not real life.

 

[8letters]

The example is fine. Nearly all abbreviations/acronyms should be explained as the example does at least the first time they appear. In nonfiction, you'd put the acronym in parenthesis behind the expansion the first time it occurs and than can use it alone thereafter. Can't do this in fiction, though.

Thank you. I'll take this as an official ruling.

 

[FantasyXY]

When an acronym is commonly spoken by your audience use it as is in your story. Think AT&T and IBM. In the last 20 plus years I've never heard anyone refer to either of those companies by their full names.

As far as university degrees are concerned, I always hear PhD and almost always hear MBA instead of Master of Business Administration. Bachelor's is almost always bachelors instead of something like BSEE (Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering).

As for university names the only one that I can think of right now that has wide acronym recognition is MIT. IN fact I have heard MIT used to talk about how smart someone is, not necessarily whether or not that person actually attended.

But I am sure you didn't ask this question just to hash over school names and degrees. So I'm going back to my original statement. If your intended audience always uses the acronym, use it. If not, use your big boy words or ensure that there is enough context to ensure the reader understands which OSU you are referring to.

Note that this rule also applies to technical writing. No one expects anyone to spell out and define something like AT&T or IBM. But as Pilot pointed out early on in this thread, everything else has to be defined and acronyms are placed in parenthesis. In technical writing and in fiction, the reader wants to know what he/she is reading.

 

[oggbashan]

Are you writing for the correct audience?

I mentioned above that acronyms don't travel.

A current thread on the General Board points out that only 37% of visitors to Literotica are US-based.

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1156247

If your stories use acronyms that are meaningful only to US readers, you could be confusing nearly 60%, certainly half, of all your potential audience. (I'm assuming that Canadians understand US terminology).

Some US initials are understood worldwide - CIA, FBI.

But many are not - DUI.

 

[Hypoxia]

But many are not - DUI.

Isn't DUI a code for Dubai?