Friday, May 28, 2010

a.m. and p.m.

These two abbreviations are used everyday by people all over the world. A.M. which is short for 'ante meridiem' meaning 'before noon' , is used to indicate the hours between midnight and midday, and P.M. which is short for 'post meridiem' meaning 'after noon', is used to indicate the hours between midday and midnight. I have seen signboards which read "Open from 5 p.m. to 12 p.m." or "We are closed from 12 a.m."

Believe it or not, there are no such times as 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. It is only right to indicate these two particular times of the day as 12 Noon or 12 Midnight.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Initialism

Referring to my earlier posting on acronyms and abbreviations, initialism is an abbreviation consisting of the initial letter or letters of a word or phrase in which each letter is pronounced separately and followed by a period, e.g. A.S.A.P. , "as soon as possible." This is a special form of abbreviation.

Nowadays, with the advent of the internet chat, and sms (short message service) on the mobile phone, numerous initialisms have cropped up. This is partly to save time and also to reduce the cost of sending the message, e.g B4 "before", MYOB, "Mind Your Own Business", btw, "by the way", and this one is my favourite, HAND, "Have A Nice Day", which I dedicate to PK.