Have you ever visited a website page only to discover the first three paragraphs are filled with abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms that have no meaning for you?
What does MDH mean? Or WFH?
You’re not alone.
Every day I read content with abbreviations, and no explanation of what they mean.
For some websites, I do my research to discover what they mean.
On other sites, I leave.
Frustrated that I visited their site.
And mentally tagging their site as one I don’t want to visit again.
What’s The Problem?
People visit your site to find information, look for a solution to a problem, or find a service or product.
When your content uses an acronym readers don’t understand, they’re left wondering what it means.
Readers may skim the rest of your content to gain more context. And get frustrated when they find none.
Or more likely, they’ll leave your site to find another site that provides the info they need, without having to wonder what an acronym means.
That happens daily on thousands of sites to thousands of people. And it doesn’t need to.
If you have your own website, that’s a lost reader, customer, or prospective customer.
Why should readers struggle through content, trying to understand from the context what the abbreviation, acronym, or initialism means?
Personally, how am I supposed to know what your three-letter abbreviation means if you don’t explain it?
Don’t make me think.
Using abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms on your page, with no explanations of what they mean, is a puzzle to your readers.
They don’t understand what the meaning is unless you provide it.
Don’t assume your readers already know what the abbreviation, acronym, or initialism means because you included the explanation on another page on your site.
The reader may have landed on your page from a link on another site, or an entirely different page on your site.
They have no idea you provided the explanation on your website, because they’ve never visited the page with the explanation.
Include Explanations on First Use
My recommendation for using abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms: explain what it means the first time you use it on a page.
You don’t have to include the explanation for additional instances.
Here’s an example:
The Children’s Center is licensed by the State of Michigan Department of Human Services (DHS) and accredited by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs (NAEYC).
In the past, the title attribute on the abbr element was used to provide the abbreviation explanation on desktop browsers.
Readers would hover over the abbreviation with their mouse to expose the explanation as a tooltip.
However, relying on the title attribute for abbr is currently discouraged.
Why?
Well, it’s not usable or accessible to many users.
In fact, Steve Faulkner says in his March 2020 post on the HTML title attribute for The Paciello Group:
If you want to hide content from mobile and tablet users as well as assistive tech users and keyboard only users, use the title attribute.
Why? Faulkner includes a number of reasons to avoid using the title attribute:
- Only available to mouse users
- It’s problematic for low-vision users
- Not available to mobile users
Summary
Do your readers a favor, explain what abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms mean on first use on a page.
Let your readers focus on your content, without scratching their head over what a group of four capital letters means.
Don’t leave your readers puzzling over what an abbreviation or acronym means.
For those readers wondering about the acronyms I used at the beginning of this post, I found them all today in posts and tweets people published.
MDH means Minnesota Department of Health and WFH means Working From Home. Which prompted me to update this post.
Originally published January 29, 2014
