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, and in LaTeX output, if the second argument is present, it is printed in parentheses after the acronym. In HTML and DocBook the appropriate 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.
• 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.