Abbreviations and articles

Acronyms that abbreviate the names (proper nouns) of organizations and systems do not take the definite article the even if their full forms do.

Exemple adequatOPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)

Exemple adequatUNTERM (the United Nations Multilingual Terminology Database)


But when they abbreviate common nouns, they take the or a(n) as necessary.

Exemple adequatthe MD (managing director)

Exemple adequata CMS (content management system)


Initialisms generally take the definite article if the full form does.

Exemple adequatthe ERA (the European Research Area)

Exemple adequatthe OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)


This rule can be applied to the abbreviations of the names of Catalan-speaking universities because the full forms always begin with the definite article la (la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, la Universitat Rovira i Virgili, la Universitat de València).

Exemple adequatthe UPC
Exemple adequatthe URV
Exemple adequatthe UV


Universities may establish other norms, however. For example, the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia is known as UVic–UCC (without the) in its English abbreviated form. In English, many universities prefer this usage.

Exemple adequatUSC is the University of Southern California.


Finally, remember that the article is not necessary when the full term is hardly ever used (HIV, for human immunodeficiency virus), when it describes a general notion (VET, for vocational education and training) or when we consider the abbreviation to be a name in its own right (IBM, for International Business Machines Corporation).

To choose between a or an, apply the rule “a before a consonant sound, an before a vowel sound” (as if the abbreviation following the article were being spoken).

Exemple adequata LERU decision
Exemple adequata PTGAS representative
Exemple adequata UJI student
Exemple adequatan Erasmus grant
Exemple adequatan EHEA guideline
Exemple adequatan NBA player
Darrera actualització: 14-3-2024
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Recommended citation:
«Abbreviations and articles» [en línia]. A: Llibre d’estil de la Universitat de Barcelona. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona. Serveis Lingüístics. <https://www.ub.edu/llibre-estil/criteri.php?id=2368> [consulta: 28 març 2024].
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