Abbreviations/Acronyms 

When you use abbreviations (shortened versions of words) or acronyms (words formed from the initial letters of a phrase), follow these guidelines:

• Before using acronyms or abbreviations specific to your product, check with your marketing and legal representatives.
• Search your intranet and the Internet for the acronym to make sure it isn't already used for another purpose in your customers' industry.
• Spell out the first usage of an acronym that is not a trademark or a well known industry standard, with the acronym in parentheses directly following. For example, the acronym RAM is a well known industry standard and does not need to be defined. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is not well known and so must be spelled out upon first mention in text.
• Use the acronym alone in subsequent references on the same screen, on subsequent pages of a wizard, or in additional screens of a dialog box or pages of a property sheet.
• It is acceptable to use an acronym in a title or heading, but do not spell out its meaning. Instead, spell out the term in the first sentence after the title or heading, if it hasn't been spelled out in earlier material.
• In Web and Web-like interfaces, you can link to a separate glossary instead of spelling out the term.
• Acronyms are centric to the United States and many of them must be localized. Some acronyms, such as TCP/IP, can be used because they are seldom or never localized. If you are not sure whether an acronym will be localized, check with Localization.