About how too many abbreviations makes your reader feel they are deciphering a secret code, and what to do about it

Have you ever tried to decipher a secret code? Felt frustrated? Well, that’s how readers feel when they are readying a piece of text with too many abbreviations. And we scientists love to use those.

Abbreviations when used wisely can greatly add to the readability of your article. However, use them unwisely and they are a pain to the reader.

To understand why you need to look at your brain. Every time you use an abbreviation you ask something of your readers working memory, that part of your brain that holds temporary bits and pieces of information. And like your computer memory it has its limits. Give it to many bits to hold onto at once and you can be sure that some will slip way.

Each new abbreviation you introduce in your text will end up in that working memory. On top of all the other things that your busy scientist reader is trying to hold on to. When that storage unit in their brain reaches max capacity, which is predicted to lay around seven bits of information, things will start to slip. That means that the reader will have to go back through the text to find out what that abbreviation stands for.

Now if you assume that before starting reading your paper, the reader has already two bits of info that it tries to hold on to. Reading your paper itself takes up properly two or three bits as well, for trying to hold onto that new concept that you are introducing, and for the reading itself. That means that at best you have about three bits of info to play with.

Types of abbreviations

Coming back to the abbreviations themselves. In scientific papers there are roughly three types of abbreviations. The first of those are covering those of gene and protein names, although you can also include the names of institutes and programmes in this category. Those the reader can often just read past without knowing the exact meaning of the abbreviation without losing the meaning of the sentence. With that I mean that no information gets lost about actions that take place.

That does not mean that it is not important to check if he chosen abbreviation is unique enough for your readers so that they don’t accidentally swap it for another name.

In the second category are falling the abbreviation for actions. Like “dpi” which in plant biology often stands for “days post inoculation”. For those types of abbreviations is important that the reader gets the correct meaning. As the reader for example assumes that “dpi” stands for “dots per inch” what a simple internet search tells you, then he or she might assume you did something completely different, and you article might get really confusing.

It is therefore important that you not only keep the number of those types of abbreviations to a minimum, because of limited working memory, but also that you properly introduce them. You do this by writing the meaning out in full the first time you use it, followed by the abbreviation between round brackets. For the used example this looks like:

“… days post inoculation (dpi) …”

It is important to introduce your reader to the abbreviation in the main body of your article, that is in the Introduction, Results or Discussion section. Now I can hear you think what about the Materials and Methods section? Not only are placing publishers this section often at the end of the paper, but this section is also not read by lots of the readers. So, it is wisely not to introduce abbreviations here that you also use in the main text of the article.

Then there is a third category of abbreviations, those for locations, for example tissue or cell types. This one falls in between the first and second categories. As a location is a name you might assume it fits best with the first category. But like abbreviations of the second category, it also has direct meaning, it points to a specific tissue or cell type or other geographical location. It therefore is important that the reader gets it right.

In illustrations, with their meaning written out in full in the legend, they work well. In the main body of the article, it can become more of an issue.

What to consider

In those cases, and for abbreviations that fall in category 2, it is important to consider the following points.

1. Is the used abbreviation in the context that it is used unique enough for the reader not to get confused?
2. Do you really use the word or phrase that often that it requires an abbreviation? I would say less that four times in an average length article is not enough to potentially confuse your readers.
3. Then, keeping in mind the limits of our working memory, how many abbreviations that fall in the second or third category will be novel for your readers? This is a tricky one as you and your direct colleagues are likely already familiar with the abbreviations you aim to use. But a search through the articles of the journal you hope to publish in might give you an answer.
   The result of those can fall into three options
   1. If your search for an abbreviation comes back with less than a handful of articles, consider it novel and not widely known. This type of abbreviations asks a lot of our working memory, keep them to a limit.
   1. If the search comes back with more than a hundred or so papers who use it with the exact same meaning you intent to use it, it is safe to say that it is widely known and does not impact the working memory that much. Still introduce it properly though.
   1. If the search comes back with lots of article that give a different meaning to your abbreviation, then it is best to use the full word or phrase to avoid confusion.

Then the last thing you need to keep in mind is that the used abbreviations are not too similar to each other. For gene and protein names I know you haven’t much choice, but for the others, especially the novel ones, you do.

Prompt

Set a timer at 2 minutes and make a list of all the abbreviations you use in your work. Then after the timer has gone off, add their meaning, check with a college if you are unsure. Follow this up with a general internet search and a specific one by the journal you like to publish in.

Are the meanings you find matching with how you use them? Any surprises? Let me know in the comments. Same with any questions you might have.

Happy writing

PS: If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.