Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/The Nets/Abbreviations

Cricket writing is often characterised by the frequent use of abbreviations and acronyms, many of which will not be found in any dictionary or even in cricket books and journals. This phenomenon has its own term – the "Three Letter Acronym" or TLA (ironically also an acronym containing three letters in its own right).

In cricket abbreviations are often shortened team names, such as "England" or "India" being shorted to the TLA "ENG" and "IND". Methods of dismissal, such as "leg before wicket" can be abbreviated as "LBW", or the famous guardian of the Laws of Cricket, the Marylebone Cricket Club can be abbreviated as the "MCC". Interestingly, cricket also abbreviates beyond the TLA, mostly in the shortening of team names. "Hampshire" or "Northamptonshire" becoming "Hants" and "Northants"; though using such abbreviations for county/international/provincial/regional/state team names in cricket articles is discouraged. Abbreviateing the aforementioned Marylebone Cricket Club is considered acceptable (e.g. "the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) played...", thereafter using "MCC", e.g. "the MCC played a further six matches on the tour...").

The policy covering the use of abbreviations on Wikipedia is located at Manual of Style/Abbreviations, and although the use of these terms can be considered acceptable when introduced at first use, over time the use of abbreviations and acronyms for unit names and ranks has come to be widely considered something that should be avoided, or at least done only sparingly, with their presentation in full seemingly preferred by general consensus, particularly during community review process such as GA or FAC. Whilst this may be seen as a preference often expressed by non-specialists, at a basic level this goes to the requirement of clarity as many of our readers will have no military background, and may not regularly read military history topics, and therefore cannot be expected to understand such terms. Equally, the excessive use of abbreviations or acronyms, even when appropriately defined, is arguably distracting jargon and not conducive to encyclopaedic tone.