abbreviation

An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning short [1]) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters, lower case letters do count or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase, for example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev.; NBM, for nil (or nothing) by mouth is an abbreviated medical instruction. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language (for example, e.g., i.e. or RSVP). Some types of abbreviations are acronyms (which are pronounceable), initialisms (using initials only), or grammatical contractions or crasis. Picture: Example of 15th-century Latin manuscript text with scribal abbreviations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation