Dear A:

You wrote:

I was wondering how many abbreviations are there in the English language and in what types are they divided into.

Thank you,
A (Brazil)

There are hundreds of commonly used abbreviations in English. Thousands, of course, if you start considering geographic abbreviations. You can buy several different Dictionaries of Abbreviations.

In English, there are two kinds of abbreviations commonly recognized. The first kind are “true” abbreviations, a shorter way of writing a word or phrase. These include some abbreviations that have entered English from other langauges, especially Latin. They would include such shortened words as “Rd.” for “Road” or “etc.” from the Latin “et cetera.”

The second kind of abbreviations are those that are pronounced as though they were a new word. These are called acronyms. They include such words as “scuba,” which is short for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus” or “NATO” (in English pronounced to rhyme with the name “Plato”) which is short for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

I hope this helps. Our web site and our English reference program Grammar Slammer contains many of the commonly used English abbreviations including abbreviations used in geographical addresses and abbreviations used in measurements.

I hope this helps.