Acronyms make life easier for the writer: not the reader.
Every time a reader encounters an acronym they don’t know, they either ignore it – meaning they understand less of what you wrote – or they have to look it up.
That’s why every decent style guide says to avoid acronyms when possible, except if everyone knows them.
For example, if you’re writing for Australians, you can use NSW for New South Wales: but that only works because NSW is so well known.
Most acronyms aren’t anywhere near as widely known, however. So what do you do with those?
The most common approach is to spell out the full term on the first mention, and then have the acronym in brackets right after the term: ie the Centre for Worshipping Dan (CFWD). Then, for all subsequent mentions, just use the acronym.
However, there is a better, albeit less well-known, alternative rule that says you should only do this if the full term is better known than the acronym. If the acronym is better known, however, then you flip it around.
For example, if 70% of readers know what CFWD means but 30% don’t, you should have the acronym first, followed by the full term: ie CFWD (Centre for Worshipping Dan).
Yet even when you define an acronym, it’s common for people to forget it soon afterwards. We’ve all seen an acronym in a report or an article only to then have to go back over what we’ve just read to try and find the definition again. It’s not a great experience.
That’s why you should try to avoid the acronym, such as by simply saying the centre in subsequent mentions rather than CFWD.
However, there are times when you do need to repeat the acronym. If so, a good guideline is to redefine it if it appears too far away from the first mention. For example, if you defined an acronym on page 1 of a report, and then mention it again on page 4, it’s best to explain what that acronym means on page 4 if you don’t want to force readers to stop in their tracks and go searching for the original mention.
And yes, in a perfect world, the CFWD would absolutely exist.
