'Find and replace' these family law acronyms
12th December 2024
Reading the guidance on parental alienation published by the Family Justice Council. I was reminded how Elon Musk described the excessive use of acronyms as ‘a significant impediment to communication’ and he sent an email to the entire staff of hisdcompany SpaceX with the subject line ‘Acronyms Seriously Suck’ and escribing the excessive use of acronyms as ‘a significant impediment to communication.’
Musk was concerned about the proliferation of acronyms in his company. In practical terms he explained that ‘no one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance.’ He remarked that ‘this is particularly tough on new employees.’
The Family Justice Council guidance contains a glossary, but it was very hard going to constantly check what was meant as you read:
- AAA - Attachment, affinity and alignment
- AJR - Appropriate justified rejection
- AB - Alienating Behaviours
- PB - Protective behaviours
- RRR - Reluctance, resistance or refusal.
Given that 'find and replace' is pretty easy in Microsoft, it would not have been a big job to replace the acronyms if the author was finding it tedious to type them in full.
Every community has its jargon - lawyers and marketers are just as guilty as space engineers and doctors - but to the outsider, jargon creates an unnecessary barrier.
Even the Harvard Law School Library website recognises the problem, commenting that ‘Abbreviations used in legal citation are often completely inscrutable’.
You will be used to abbreviating common legal terms as a shorthand with colleagues but, when you are writing for a lay audience, it is a good idea to restrict your use of abbreviations to those which are well known by all.
Abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms
It is perhaps worth recapping on the differences between an abbreviation, an acronym and an initialism.
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase, used as a substitute, for example:
- Dr. is an abbreviation of Doctor
- © is an abbreviation of copyright
- Lawtech is an abbreviation of ‘technology for the legal profession’.
Initialisms are where the abbreviation is spelled out letter by letter, for example:
- VAT for value added tax
- ECJ for European Court of Justice
- LPA for lasting power of attorney.
Acronyms are where a new word sound is created from the initial letters, for example:
- WIPO for World Intellectual Property Organisation
- Cafcass for Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
Some of the problems that can arise through the use of abbreviations include:
1. Abbreviations have different meaning to different communities – remember that your online audience is global. For example, depending on the reader, LPA may stand for:
- lasting power of attorney
- local planning authority
- left pulmonary artery
- lakhs per annum
- licenced public accountant
2. Sparing use of a single familiar abbreviation is usually not too problematical, but as soon as you start introducing multiple abbreviations in the same article, it can become hard to follow particularly where the abbreviations are similar. For example, a financial services lawyer may be familiar with the differences between the following abbreviations but how many other readers would have a smooth read of an article that used all three repeatedly?
- FCA (Financial Conduct Authority),
- FAMR (Financial advice markets review)
- FEMR (Fair and effective markets review).
3. Falling back on abbreviations is often a sign of laziness in drafting and editing, as it is usually possible to rewrite a sentence with a variety of perfectly understandable alternatives.
4. Finally, if you have written the article to go on a website or blog, then you will be missing an important trick. The reason for adding regular content online is to attract viewers via internet search, but an article stuffed with abbreviations could easily be missed by its target audience. A potential client is more likely to search for ‘power of attorney in Exeter’ than ‘LPA in Exeter’.
Acronyms rarely enhance the experience for the reader. By all means use the acronyms while creating your first draft, but then go through your article with CTRL F (Press the Control and F buttons together to find each use) and polish up your article with an elegant replacement.
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