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




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




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




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).



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.



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).