As everybody knows, abbreviations and acronyms are short forms of a word or phrase, chiefly in writing, to represent the complete form. An abbreviation is pronounced one letter at a time.
An acronym is a set of letters that can be pronounce as a single word as a brief form of a corporate name or term made up of a group of letters that are commonly written/or spoken as a word. It may consist of the initial letters of the full name the text.
In Turkish, the word “kısaltma” is used for both.
The idea for a reference book of abbreviations and acronyms came to me when I worked as a cataloger/librarian in American academic libraries such as: Butler Library at Columbia University, New York; Research Library in UCLA, California; Doe Library at UCB, California; and Firestone Library at Princeton University, New Jersey.
Inquiries about the Turkish abbreviations made by readers and students in Turkish studies and researchers and people interested in life in Turkey and the Turkish language and literature at all levels, have led me to address this need. They were all looking for the right definition to the abbreviations they came across in their Turkish source material.
I made a list of them, whenever I found them in Turkish books, periodicals, and mostly newspapers, where I discovered new ones daily.
My book, A Guide to Turkish Abbreviations and Acronyms, is intended as a descriptive, updated work. I compiled them exactly as they appeared in the original Turkish texts only, and none of them are conversational. I would like to emphasize that this book does not attempt to establish any rules or dictate any single correct style for Turkish usage of abbreviations and acronyms.
Users will find old and new terms as well as many odd, obsolete, and slang words, but it’s my responsibility to put every item I found in my research into the book.
The abbreviations and acronyms in this book are reproduced exactly as they were seen in the original text, including the same spelling, case, and punctuation.
Finally, the entries in this work are arranged in Turkish alphabetical order irrespective of spacing, punctuation, or capitalization, and alphanumeric sequences are listed in the alphabetical order of their respective letters in the following order: A, B, C, Ç, D, E, F, G, Ğ, H, I, İ, J, K, L, M, N, O, Ö, P, R, S, Ş, T, U, Ü, V, Y, Z.
