6.1.14 @acronym{acronym[, meaning]}

You can use the @acronym command for abbreviations written in all capital letters, such as ‘NASA’. The abbreviation is given as the single argument in braces, as in ‘@acronym{NASA}’. As a matter of style, or for particular acronyms, you may prefer to use periods, as in ‘@acronym{N.A.S.A.}’.

@acronym accepts an optional second argument, intended to be used for the meaning of the acronym.

If the acronym is at the end of a sentence, and if there is no second argument, remember to use the @. or similar command (see Ending a Sentence) to get the correct spacing.

In TeX, the acronym is printed in slightly smaller font. In the Info output, the argument is printed as-is. In either format, if the second argument is present, it is printed in parentheses after the acronym. In HTML and DocBook the <acronym> tag is used.

For instance (since GNU is a recursive acronym, we use @acronym recursively):

@acronym{GNU, @acronym{GNU}'s Not Unix}

produces:

GNU (GNU’s Not Unix)

In some circumstances, it is conventional to print family names in all capitals. Don’t use @acronym for this, since a name is not an acronym. Use @sc instead (see @sc{text}: The Small Caps Font).

@abbr and @acronym are closely related commands: they both signal to the reader that a shortened form is being used, and possibly give a meaning. When choosing whether to use these two commands, please bear the following in mind.

• - In common English usage, acronyms are a subset of abbreviations: they include pronounceable words like ‘NATO’, ‘radar’, and ‘snafu’; some sources also include syllable acronyms like ‘Usenet’, hybrids like ‘SIGGRAPH’, and unpronounceable initialisms like ‘FBI’.
• - In Texinfo, an acronym (but not an abbreviation) should consist only of capital letters and periods, no lowercase.
• - In TeX, an acronym (but not an abbreviation) is printed in a slightly smaller font.
• - Some browsers place a dotted bottom border under abbreviations but not acronyms.
• - It usually turns out to be quite difficult and/or time-consuming to consistently use @acronym for all sequences of uppercase letters. Furthermore, it looks strange for some acronyms to be in the normal font size and others to be smaller. Thus, a simpler approach you may wish to consider is to avoid @acronym and just typeset everything as normal text in all capitals: ‘GNU’, producing the output ‘GNU’.
• - In general, it’s not essential to use either of these commands for all abbreviations; use your judgment. Text is perfectly readable without them.