A Soldier's Song
UPDATE: Ψ*Ψ found an out-of-context abbreviation somewhere in an review article.
Abbreviations! From crowbert’s photostream
(A) Random Walker made a comment on one of my post containing the abbreviation ‘ACIE’. ACIE is for Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., the journal. Offical usages like this include JACS and PCCP, as I know. The RSC journal Chem. Commun. use Chem Comm (cut the ‘mun’) as its title but I have not seen any references use ‘Chem Comm’ for citation – what a pity.
I suppose most of the chemists know ‘CNTs’ (Carbon Nanotubes) and ‘SWCNTs’ (Single Wall CNTs). ‘QDs’ (Quantum Dots) is also famous in nanoscience. Such divisions of University of California as UCLA, UCSB and UCSD appear in the institution section of chemical papers from time to time.
Less general abbreviations of specific disciplines, however, are more diverse (tell me what’s ITO, PPV and PEDOT/PSS in semiconductor science). Some research groups even used their own abbreviation for intra-group communication. I know an organic synthesis group call Chem. Commun. as CC, Chem. Rev. as CR, Chem. Soc. Rev. as CSR, and an optical device group call Adv. Mater. as AM – they even call the high-impact pair Science and Nature as S&N. Physical groups call Phys. Rev. Lett., of course, as PRL, J. Phys. Chem. B as JPCB, J. Chem. Phys. as JCP, Phys. Rev. E as PRE, etc. Polymer groups would be proud of their library of abrriviations, PNIPAAm (poly(N-propylacrylamide), a thermoresponsive polymer), PAMAM (polyamidoamine, a dendrimer）, PVDF, PHEMA (poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate), a polymer for hydrogel and contact lens applications) being just a few examples. And possibly you know such characterizing tools as TEM, STM, and XRD very well but what’s EELS (electron energy loss spectroscopy), ZEKE (zero electron kinetic energy), ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry), and TOF-SIMS (Time-of-Fly Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy)?
Certainly abbreviations should always be used in a given context, and most paper-writing guides recommend the least use of abbreviation, but putting together abbreviation of different areas and ignoring their context may sometimes be funny. More interesting will be the pronunciation. I suppose no one read JACS as ‘J, A, C, S’ but directly ‘jacks’. But will someone read PNIPAAm as ‘P-Nipam’, or EELS as ’L’s’? Do you know any special abbreviations that seem or sound odd to others?
Last updated: Sunday, 19 Aug 2007 - 14:22 UTC
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I know more than a few people who still snigger at PNAS.
So even ‘official’ abbreviation would be embarrassing…
ADT (anthradithiophene) is an important one in my lab.
It HAS been a while since I’ve heard from you—we may be moving CBC to its own domain soon, though. :)
PNAS is a good one—probably it refers to those articles “contributed” by members of NAS.