Cassell's Dictionary of Abbreviations [antikvár]

Preface Today, in this era of space travel and automation, we find more than ever the need for abbreviations to save time in both business and pleasure. Having compiled a dictionary of over 21,000 abbreviations, we find ourselves in the rather ironic position of having to resort to prose to explain our work. Could we not have invented some ingenious contraction to enlighten the reader ? Scarcely a day passes without some newspaper or journal printing a new abbreviation that has to be assimilated into the language, and although the meanings of some of them are easily decipherable, there are many others that are not. It is to meet this need that this volume has been compiled. Our main consideration has been to include abbreviations that have gained some degree of general currency both nationally and internationally. Although it is not always easy to differentiate between an abbreviation and a symbol, we have as a rule omitted pure symbols except those in common use. Neither have we included popular diminutives of christian names except in special cases, such as books of the Bible and English monarchs. A common failing with abbreviations is that they can have more than one meaning but this is unavoidable. We hope, nevertheless, that visitors to Rome will not think that 'S.P.Q.R.' stands for 'Small Profits-Quick Returns.' In a work of this size it is inevitable that there will be a number of errors and omissions and we will gladly receive any corrections, amendments or addi-