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up vote 7 down vote favorite

Assume that I give my work information in my CV with the date (year) intervals. My last position started this year and is continued at the moment.

Example Co.  ABC Manager    2012 - cont.

How should I abbreviate continued here? Is cont. correct?

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closed as not constructive by tchrist, Lynn, jwpat7, KitFox♦, Shyam Aug 2 '12 at 5:36

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5 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

There is no right or wrong with abbreviations, but you would do well to avoid them if possible. Here are three distinct pieces of advice:

  • Just write “(continued)” (including parens), and you’ll be fine.

  • If you have some sort of mania for them, or horizontal-space consideration, then sure, write “(cont.)”.

  • It’s a good idea to set it in italic, no matter what you do.

In your case, though, you should probably write one of:

  • 2012 – present
  • 2012 –

As those both look better than “2012 – (continuing)”.

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3  
Also consider "2012 forward". Note, I agree that "2012 – present" and "2012 –" are better than the other forms above, and agree abbreviation should be avoided for this item. – jwpat7 Jul 31 '12 at 19:32
up vote 3 down vote

There is also the concise 2012–now.

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up vote 1 down vote

cont’d is another abbreviation for continued that you frequently see e.g. in movie scripts when long blocks of dialog get split up, but probably not in a CV list of previous employments. I suspect it’s more of an American thing.

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up vote 14 down vote

The usual abbreviation for continued is cont. as indicated elsewhere. However, it isn't normal in BE to use this in the way shown in your example. The preferred option would be to use either 2012 to date or 2012 to present.

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1  
+1 Absolutely. cont. or its variants are for when you are breaking the textual flow and resuming elsewhere, usually on the next page or leaf. For CVs and other documents it should be as @Tony Balmforth has suggested. – 5arx Jul 31 '12 at 19:02
up vote 26 down vote

I believe the answer to the question in the title of your original post is “cont.”, but the usual way of putting that on an application or résumé is spelled “present”, as in “2012 – present”.

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6  
Or just leave it blank: “2012 –    ”. – tchrist Jul 31 '12 at 17:20
3  
"present" is used in America, but maybe Mr Palavuzlar is living somewhere else, where "continued" is used for this. – GEdgar Jul 31 '12 at 17:21
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@MehperC.Palavuzlar I should think 'pres.' would do nicely – JAM Jul 31 '12 at 17:53
4  
@MehperC.Palavuzlar, For the record, Why does it need to be abbreviated? – user606723 Jul 31 '12 at 21:20
1  
Doesn't sound (or look) very elegant to me :p – Svish Aug 1 '12 at 10:23
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