Abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms

How Rime automatically pronounces common abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms — and how to control pronunciation when needed.

Rime pronounces most common abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms correctly out of the box. The patterns below show how to format input when you want to control pronunciation explicitly.

For a tour of text normalization across all categories, see Text normalization. For specific patterns Rime doesn’t expand cleanly, see Pre-normalizing text.

Abbreviations

Rime correctly pronounces most common abbreviations automatically.

Format	Example	Reads as
Title abbreviation	Dr. Smith	doctor smith
Latin abbreviation	e.g.	for example
Street abbreviation	rd.	road
Saint abbreviation	St. John	saint john

Some abbreviations resolve based on surrounding context — for example, St. reads as “saint” in St. John but “street” in Main St. See Addresses for street and state abbreviations in address context.

Acronyms and initialisms

Acronyms are pronounced as a single word — for example, NASA reads as “Nasa”. Initialisms are pronounced as a series of letters — for example, DNA reads as “D N A”.

By default, Rime pronounces a series of capital letters as an acronym (a single word). For many common initialisms — DNA, ID, USA, FBI, CIA — Rime automatically pronounces them as a series of letters.

To force initialism pronunciation reliably, use lowercase letters with a period and space after each:

Format	Example	Reads as
Capitalized acronym	NASA	Nasa
Capitalized initialism (recognized)	DNA	D N A
Lowercase + dotted	d. n. a.	D N A
Lowercase + dotted	u. p. s.	U P S
Lowercase + dotted	g. p. a.	G P A

You can also specify a custom pronunciation for any acronym or initialism using Rime’s custom pronunciations feature.

Known gaps

Context-dependent abbreviations like Dr., Mr., and St. rely on surrounding words to resolve and may not always read the way you expect. For workarounds and a drop-in prompt template, see Pre-normalizing text.

Related

• Custom pronunciation for defining how a specific term should sound
• Spell function for forced letter-by-letter reading of unrecognized acronyms (spell(NPI))
• Addresses, URLs, and emails for street and state abbreviations in address context