The use of abbreviations in business communications

Clear communication is one of the vital elements of successful business management. Traveling and working in few countries, I have seen first hand how the use of abbreviations could lead to a big mis-understanding.

I have seen the use of “u r” which means “you are” in formal business communications, when I started my current consulting job, I would see the abbreviation ‘RP”, in many of my company’s formal letters and no where it was explained what “ RP” stands for, it stand for “resident permit.”.

We are living in a very diverse world, and the wide spread of communications made it easy for businesses to communicate world wide, but that doesn’t not mean that abbreviations used by you locally would be understood by people in another country.

When is comes to important business communication, spell the words out, don’t use abbreviations unless there were for abbreviations that understood and are officially used world wide like WWW, which stands for world wide web or abbreviations that pertain to a certain profession.