English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am writing a report in English and am repeatedly abbreivating a name.
In the first sentence of doing this, I put the abbreviation inside brackets.
Do I now need to continue with the brackets for the rest of the report or can I just use the abbreviation.
Example, Mr Joe Bloggs (Mr JB) OR Mr JB
I hope as a first timer here this both makes sense and has no spelling or grammatical errors!
Yes, that's the reason you're creating the abbreviation in the first place - otherwise, just write it out in full everywhere.
When you’re defining an abbreviation, write out the words first and then put the abbreviation in parentheses right afterward. Continue to use the abbreviation by itself throughout the document unless you have a good reason to define it again. And don’t get so carried away with abbreviations that your document becomes hard to read. - QuickAndDirtyTips.com
So your first reference would look like this:
And your subsequent references would look like this (without brackets):
In the event that the person is famous as "Mr JB" but his legal name is "Mr Joe Bloggs", and if you're adding "(Mr JB)" simply to state the connection, then the job of stating the abbreviation is complete at the first mention, and subsequent references can just have:
You are writing his abbreviated name in brackets so they know that that is him. If it is then written later on they know who you're talking about. Writing it in brackets would suggest that you don't need his name.
