When to use or omit periods in acronyms, abbreviations, and initials [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Is it OK to drop the periods in abbreviations?

I don't understand when or where to use or discard a period when writing short forms.

For example, my college is the Malaviya National Institute of Technology. Should I abbreviate it as M.N.I.T. or is MNIT better?

A second example, for Windows Portable Executable, is it "P.E.", "PE", or "PE."?

Lastly, if I write out my project's name UNMP, should I capitalize all words or just the first one? "Unified Network Management Platform" vs. "Unified network management platform".

I often have this question when writing papers/resumes.

Answer 1

You're looking for Punctuation in abbreviations:

1. In both British and American English, if you are using initial (i.e. first) letters to represent words, you don’t normally need to put a full stop after them:

   BBC

   NATO

2. In American English, however, it is common to use a full stop as an alternative style for certain abbreviations, in particular:

   USA or U.S.A.

So in your case, MNIT and Windows PE are fine. Also, I would capitalize the first words in those abbreviations: United Management ...