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What is an abbreviation? Abbreviations have a long history, created so that spelling out a whole word could be avoided. This might be done to save time and space, and also to provide secrecy. In both Greece and Rome the reduction of words to single letters was common. In Roman inscriptions, "Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation". However, "some could have more than one meaning, depending on their context. An abbreviation, on the other hand, is also a way to shorten a phrase but with a slight difference. In general, abbreviations tend to shorten the word or phrase being referenced by literally shortening the word but not creating a new one. So for example, shortening the word “avenue” to “ave.” is an abbreviation rather than an acronym because “ave.” does not form a new enunciable word. Similarly, shortening the names of the months, such as “December” to “Dec.” is also an abbreviation because when reading “Dec.” out loud, you would just say the full term “December.”