Briefly and shortly are easily confused. While brief and short are often synonymous (as you can read here), briefly and shortly have very different meanings.
Briefly means for a short time.
She appeared briefly in an Italian film. In Britain he worked briefly as a veterinarian. We spoke briefly about the weather.
Shortly means soon and indicates a point in time.
Shortly after her exam, she moved to Paris. I’ll be with you shortly.
The following message should not worry you too much:
The landlord will briefly cut off electricity in the building. This means that you will be without electricity for a short time.
However, if you get the following message, you might worry:
The landlord will shortly cut off electricity in the building. This implies that you may not have time to prepare for the power cut.
To sum up:
Briefly tells us that something lasts for a short time. Shortly indicates a short time before or after something.
I’ll see you briefly means that I will see you for a short time. I’ll see you shortly means that I will see you very soon.
They said they’d be back shortly
As I mentioned above, you can read about the words brief and shorthere.
Both brief and short are adjectives that are the opposite of long when we talk about time.
The lecturer gave a brief summary of previous research. There was a brief moment of silence.
We had a short discussion. It happened a short time ago.
Short can also be the opposite of tall as well as the opposite of long when we talk about distance.
The boy was short and chubby. The bus stop is just a short distance from our house.
A short walk with grandpa
Brief is sometimes used as a verb meaning inform and as a noun meaning shortinformation, summary.
The press secretary briefed us about the decision. Our boss gave us a first brief of the negotiations.
Brief can also mean instructions about duties, responsibilities, etc.
Part of the architect’s brief was to design a building that would comply with local environmental regulations.
A briefing is a meeting in which detailed information or instructions are given.
Debriefing has two meanings: A detailed report given by an agent or a soldier after a mission has been carried out or a meeting held after a traumatic event (such as a natural disaster, a hijacking, etc.) to let victims deal with their trauma.
Briefs is another word for underwear, while shorts are trousers (usually for sport or relaxing) that reach only to the thighs or the knees. Shorts can also refer to underwear for men.
Before this text gets too long, I had better remind myself to be brief or to keep it short.
My next blog post takes a look at briefly and shortly, two words with very different meanings.
To indicate that you are not at all concerned about something you can say I couldn’t care less.
I couldn’t care less if my old car broke down. I’ve been planning to buy a new one for some time now.
If his girlfriend left him, he couldn’t care less. He has found out that she is not his type.
So the phrase I couldn’t care less means that you don’t care at all.
Therefore it seems strange to hearI could care less, which has grown in use, particularly in American English.
He was so tired that he could care less if the roof fell down on him.
To me this indicates that he actually has some concern left, so the statement is actually illogical; it implies that he still cares, that he still has worries. As a copyeditor I recommend that you stick to the original version with couldn’t.
I couldn’t care less if I had to scrap my old car.
As we have seen in another blog post, the -ing form, the present continuous, indicates that something is going on just for the moment.
I’m writing an email on the balcony (momentarily). He writes articles for monthly magazines (a regular activity).
He is living in France (temporarily). I live in Sweden (Sweden is my home country).
To say that someone is only temporarily in a place, the verb stay is often used.
He is staying at a small hotel in Lyon.
I’m writing an email on the balcony
Non-native speakers of English whose mother tongue only has the present simple sometimes tend to overuse the present continuous when they speak English, since they believe that to be the common form. Even if they intend to convey a permanent state, they may say or write sentences such as the following (for the use of the asterisk read at the end of this text):
*I’m travelling to work by bus every morning all year round. (Since this is what happens regularly you should say I travel to work by bus every morning.)
*He is designing cars. (This is his permanent job, hence the correct sentence would be He designs cars.)
*They are playing golf every weekend. (This is a habit, so it should be They play golf every weekend.)
*That book is costing nine dollars. (That is a fixed price, so the correct version is That book costs nine dollars.)
*They are making washing machines. (Unless this is a temporary production and they normally make refrigerators, we must write They make washing machines.)
You should think twice before using the -ing form in English!
What’s the difference between He plays football and He is playing golf?
The person we are talking about is obviously a professional footballer, but right now he is active on a golf course.
In English there are two ways of expressing an action in the present tense: the present simple and the present continuous.
Present simple
We use the present simple when we talk about
– a permanent (or nearly permanent) situation:
My uncle lives in Spain. He works as a tourist guide.
– what we do regularly, habits:
Her brother collects rare books. I drink black coffee in the morning.
– what is always true:
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. A Tesla coil produces high-voltage electric pulses.
– what happens in a book or a film:
The two friends plan a robbery. At the end she marries a millionaire.
Present continuous
We use the present continuous when we talk about
– things that are happening just now:
The water is boiling, so you’d better find the teabags. Look, it’s raining!
– a temporary situation:
My uncle is staying at a small hotel during his visit to Paris. He is practising his French.
– temporary or annoying habits:
I’m spending too much time on Facebook these days. Mum is always complaining about the mess in my room.
– what we see in a photo:
Here we are waiting for the limousine. The children are waving to grandma from the balcony.
To sum up:
Use the -ing form when you write about what is going on temporarily and the simple form when you write about what happens regularly.
The same applies to the past:
Past simple
My uncle worked in a bookshop. I ran to school every morning.
Past continuous
They were running to catch the train. What were you doing at seven o’clock last night? I tried to call you.
They were running to catch the train.
Often past simple and past continuous are used in the same sentence to say that something happened in the middle of something else going on:
I was having breakfast when the doorbell rang. When Susan came home, her husband was cooking dinner.
In the last example, her husband had started cooking before Susan came home. If he started cooking after she arrived, we would say
When Susan came home, her husband cooked dinner.
So, to say They are making cars would suggest that the activity is only temporary. Production in a car factory is a long-term activity, and therefore we must write They make cars.
Non-native writers of English may tend to overuse the -ing form. Read more here.
In a previous blog entry we looked at acronyms and initialisms. Probably the most common initialism is OK. Meaning acceptable, everything is in order, go ahead, I approve, etc., it is used in many languages.
Just as internet-savvy young people nowadays use fancy abbreviations such as 2Y2 (to you too), CU L8ER (see you later) and TNX (thanks), people in the 1830s also made up funny abbreviations, often based on intended misspellings. They could, for example, write KY for know yuse, meaning no use. All right was abbreviated OW (oll wright). OK was such a misspelling, supposed to mean oll korrect. It became popular when it first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post in 1839.
In 1840, President Martin van Buren campaigned for reelection, and his supporters chose O.K. as the motto for the campaign. Van Buren’s nickname was Old Kinderhook, and supporters formed O.K. Clubs around the country. In the end, van Buren was not okayed by the voters; his opponent William Henry Harrison won the election.
OK became increasingly popular and is used all over the world in various versions such as okeh, okie, okej, okey, ookoo, owkej, hokay and others.
You can write OK in different ways, with and without full stops and in uppercase or lowercase letters. If you write for a journal, you should consult its style guide. OK is also written okay, and in student slang it became okey-dokey or okie-dokie.
Space people at NASA added a letter; AOK means All OK.
The initialism has its own sign: to signal OK, you form a circle with your thumb and first finger with the other fingers pointing upwards.
That’s OK!
You should, however, be cautious about using this OK sign in certain countries, where it might be vulgar or offensive. In Brazil, for example, it is the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger (up yours!). The sign has also become linked to white supremacist groups in the USA.
There have been alternative suggestions about the origin of OK. One theory says that the abbreviation is from the Choctaw language (the Choctaws are a Native American people in the southeastern United States). An example of folk etymology is the belief that OK comes from the Scottish och aye, meaning oh yes. Another explanation points out that the letters OK were stamped on biscuits given to soldiers in the American Civil War. The biscuits came from Orrin Kendall’s bakery. But the most probable explanation is the one from the Boston Morning Post.
While an acronym is formed from a phrase, a backronym (or bacronym) is a word that is supposed to come from a phrase, but that phrase has been constructed (often humorously) to fit an existing word.
A well-known example of a backronym is posh, meaning stylish, elegant, upper-class. There is a popular belief that posh came from ’port out, starboard home’. It was thought that rich people would book two cabins on their voyage to India and back home, one on the port side of the ship and the other on the starboard. In that way they made sure that they could travel more comfortably, away from the heat of the sun. However, posh was quite simply a slang word in the late 1800s for an overdressed dandy. Another meaning of posh was a small coin, money.
Port or starboard?
Another backronym is golf, which is – erroneously – said to come from gentlemen only, ladies forbidden. The word golf is considered to come from Middle Dutch cold, meaning stick or club.
A few more backronyms:
Cop
Constable on patrol
Ford
Fix or repair daily
IBM
It's Better Manually
Navy
Never again volunteer yourself
Tip
To ensure promptness
A CAPTCHA is a distorted code you copy on a website to access a page. This is to prevent automated attacks on a website. The acronym is said to mean Completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. However, I am not sure that the word is a true acronym. It was probably made in analogy with gotcha, ’I have got you’, meaning that you have caught somebody doing something wrong. A gotcha also means a sudden unexpected problem. The interesting thing is that there now is another way to prevent hackers from accessing a web page – and it is called GOTCHA, said to mean Generating panOptic Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. If you don’t know Alan Turing or the Turing Test, read here or here.
The Morse signal SOS is said to mean Save our Ship or Save our Souls. In fact, the alarm signal is …- – -… (three short, three long, three short without any pause), while the letters SOS in Morse code are three short, pause, three long, pause, three short.
Another distress signal is Mayday, mainly used by airplane or ship crews. It is used in voice communication via radio. In a life-threatening emergency the word is repeated three times. The word is said to have been created by Frederick Rockford, a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London in 1923. Mayday supposedly comes from the French m’aidez meaning ‘help me’ or venez m’aider meaning ‘come and help me’. So Mayday is not a backronym.
Neither is May Day, which is something completely different. It refers to the first of May (or the first Monday in May) being a festival in many countries to celebrate the arrival of spring.
Acronyms are a type of abbreviation. They are formed by the first letter of each word in a phrase and usually, but not always, written in capital letters. An acronym is pronounced as a word:
ASAP
As soon as possible
HIRC
Human–industrial robot collaboration
NASDAQ
National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
PIN
Personal identification number
POTUS
President of the United States
SARS
Severe acute respiratory syndrome
SWOT
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
WADA
World Anti-Doping Agency
Some words created as acronyms have become so common that people do not know they are acronyms. Some examples:
laser
light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
radar
radio detection and ranging
scuba
self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
sonar
sound navigation and ranging
taser
Thomas A Swift's Electric Rifle
There are other abbreviations formed by the first letter of each word, but they are pronounced as individual letters. These abbreviations are called initialisms. Some examples:
B2B
Business-to-business
BMX
Bicycle motocross
CEO
Chief executive officer
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
DIY
Do-it-yourself
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
IPO
Initial public offering
NHL
National Hockey League
RFID
Radio frequency identification
WWW
World Wide Web
Detail of an RFID tag used on a garment
The most common initialism is probably OK. It is such a popular abbreviation that it deserves its own blog post.
Communicating on the internet has created many abbreviations:
2F4U
Too fast for you
AFK
Away from keyboard
BBS
Be back soon
LOL
Laughing out loud
KISS
Keep it simple, stupid
ROFL
Rolling on the floor laughing
YOLO
You only live once
How the first letter in an abbreviation is pronounced determines whether the indefinite article should be written a or an. Compare the following:
A UNESCO spokesperson
An unknown person
An FBI agent
A federal agent
An HR manager
A human resources manager
In my next blog post you can read about backronyms.
The word abbreviation comes from the Latin verb abbreviare with the adjective brevis, which means short. When you abbreviate something, you make it shorter.
Many abbreviations are formed by leaving out all except the first few letters of a word. These abbreviations often end with a full stop.
abstr.
abstract
ad., advert.
advertisement
admin.
administration
approx.
approximately
betw.
between
cont.
continue, continued
doc.
document
esp.
especially
est.
estimated
etc.
et cetera
exam
examination
fig.
figure
fut.
future
info
information
intro
introduction
lab.
laboratory
lang.
language
memo
memorandum
min.
minimum, minute
misc.
miscellaneous
mod.
modern
obs.
obsolete
orig.
origin, original(ly)
pop.
popular
St.
Street
tel.
telephone
temp.
temperature, temporary
vol.
volume
Names of the months are abbreviated according to this general principle of just shortening words.
Jan.
January
Feb.
February
Mar.
March
Apr.
April
May
May
Jun.
June
Jul.
July
Aug.
August
Sep. or Sept.
September
Oct.
October
Nov.
November
Dec.
December
There is more variation in how the days of the week are abbreviated.
Mon.
Monday
Tu., Tue. or Tues.
Tuesday
Wed.
Wednesday
Th., Thu., Thur. or Thurs.
Thursday
Fri.
Friday
Sat.
Saturday
Sun.
Sunday
Many abbreviations leave out letters in the middle of a word and end with the last letter of the word. Here are some examples:
Names of the states in the USA are abbreviated to two uppercase letters. You can find them here. The capital Washington is in the District of Columbia, abbreviated DC.
Abbreviations can also become words in their own right and we no longer realise that they are abbreviations.
Hankie (or hanky) is short for handkerchief.
The American colloquialism nabe comes from neighborhood.
Pram is short for perambulator, a carriage for a baby.
Soccer is an abbreviation of association football, which is different from American football.
The girls were watching a soccer game
In American English abbreviations are usually followed by a full stop. In British English this generally applies to abbreviations that are formed by the first letter or the first few letters of a word as in the first table above.
There are many Latin abbreviations in the English language, which you can read about here and here.
Acronyms and initialisms are also abbreviations. Read about them here.
Some writers use like when they should have used such as instead.
When you suggest a category or give something as a type example, write like:
Uncle Bill often listens to crooners like Bing Crosby.
Here Bing Crosby represents a specific type of singers, crooners, who often perform in a sentimental way (think of Crosby’s version of White Christmas and you will understand!).
The sentence does not state that Uncle Bill actually listens to Bing Crosby, only that he listens to singers of that type.
When you specify singers that Uncle Bill listens to, use such as:
He collects vinyl records with singers such as Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Perry Como, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole.
These singers are generally known as crooners, and here we understand that Uncle Bill has their records.
Seafood such as octopus is healthy
Some more examples:
You should eat more fruits like oranges. Citrus fruits such as tangerines, clementines and lemons are rich in C vitamin. Advanced tools like robots can reduce production costs. Robots can take over more complicated tasks such as welding and grinding. The course covers basic concepts of business administration such as accounting, finance, human resources and marketing.
A songwriter like Leonard Cohen will be remembered forever (Songwriters similar to Cohen will never be forgotten). A songwriter such as Leonard Cohen will be remembered forever (Leonard Cohen will never be forgotten).
There should not be a comma or a colon after such as, but you can have a comma before such as. Leave out that comma if what comes after such as is additional and essential information.
To sum up:
Use like when you refer to a category (you imply comparison).
Use such as when you give actual examples (you imply inclusion).
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