Look up 49+ common English abbreviations and acronyms — FYI, ASAP, e.g., IMO and more — with clear meanings, usage notes and real examples.
All three are shortened forms. What separates them is how you say the thing out loud — and “acronym” is the word almost everyone reaches for, usually wrongly.
Nobody will correct you for calling an initialism an acronym in a chat message. In academic, legal or technical writing, the distinction is expected — and so is spelling the term out in full the first time you use it, with the short form in brackets after it.
Tap any one to see what it stands for, when to use it, and example sentences.
FYI, ASAP, EOD, ETA and OOO are ordinary office English and read as normal rather than casual. The ones that carry a tone — LOL, ROFL, YOLO, FOMO — belong in chat with people you know, not in a message to a client.
Both are correct; the version without full stops has become standard in everyday writing. The Latin ones keep theirs — e.g. and i.e. look wrong without them.
Add a plain s, with no apostrophe: two ETAs, several CEOs. The apostrophe form (ETA’s) means something belongs to it.
In anything formal, yes — full term first, short form in brackets, short form alone after that. In a chat message nobody expects it, and doing it there reads as stiff.
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