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Should you define an abbreviation more than once with the <abbr> tag?


If I have an article or blog post and I have an abbreviation or acronym such as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) should I do this everytime the acronym SAD appears in a document?

<abbr title="Seasonal Affective Disorder">SAD</abbr>

If you do only define it once, does it have to be the very first time the abbreviation appears or could it be the 3rd or 4th time?


Solution

  • As per Wikipedias Manual of Style you should only explain an abbreviation once. I would extend this to your case as well and only use the abbreviation on first occurence.