These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Acronyms

grady.mcghee
Registered: Oct 10 2008
Posts: 22

How do you handle acronyms? Right now I am spelling out the acronym in the altrnative text.
 
thx

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.4.3, Windows
daka630
Expert
Registered: Mar 1 2007
Posts: 1420
Handling acronyms.


To start, keep their usage to a minimum by spelling it out.
Loose usage of "acronyms" accelerates the usage of abbreviations and initialisms - many of which can be spelled out. Then (shudder) comes the 'jargon'.


As these are text strings in the authoring file one cannot pre-stage alternate text. Adding alternate text has to be done as a post-processing activity & can quickly become labor intenstive.
.





With that said, the correct method in a Tagged PDF is to use "E" (Expansion Text).
.
Section 14.9.5 of ISO 32000-1 addresses Abbreviations and Acronyms.
.
~~~~~~
.
The E value (a text string) shall be considered to be a word or phrase substitution for the tagged text and therefore shall be treated as if a word break separates it from any surrounding text.The expansion text, if encoded in Unicode, may include an escape sequence for indicating the language of the text (see 7.9.2.2, “Text String Type”). Such a sequence shall override the prevailing Lang entry.

NOTE 2 Some abbreviations or acronyms are conventionally not expanded into words. For the text “XYZ,” for example, either no expansion should be supplied (leaving its pronunciation up to the text-to-speech engine) or, to be safe, the expansion “X Y Z” should be specified.
.
~~~~~~
.





Where "E" is:

In the Tags panel, select an element. From the Options menu, select "Properties". View the Content tab. You'll see the field for entering the Expansion Text. For each abbreviation, acronym, initialism, or "jargon" you'd manually populate the field for Expansion Text. Even a relatively small population of these can dramatically increase the time required to develop and deploy a proper, well-formed Tagged output PDF. Spelling out is easy, clean and promotes the efficacy of the work flow. Where appropriate, add a "List of Abbreviation/Acronyms". As well, within a specific section of content (a stand alone article or a section within a chapter) Spell out the first occurrance of a permitted acronym/abbreviation then provide the 'short name' in parens - - i.e., United States Navy (USN). Then use the (***) in the remainder of section. Repeat for each new section/article/what-not.
.





Ah well; you did ask. <g>
.





Be well...