Abbreviating the Pandemic

If you’ve followed AMA style for at least the last several years, you may remember this big (welcome) announcement:

The companion abbreviation “AIDS” was given expansion-exempt status even before this with the 2007 publication of the 10th edition. It took some time for HIV to catch up.

Why did we decide that these 2 abbreviations no longer needed expansion? For one, they are ubiquitous, instantly recognizable (at least to English-reading audiences), and are long and cumbersome to write out in full.

After more than a year of publishing coronavirus-related content (JAMA’s first article was published in January 2020 by Fauci and colleagues), the AMA Manual committee has determined that COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 meet those same criteria to forgo expansion: ubiquity, familiarity, and cumbersome expansions.

  • Before: Protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is mediated in large part by an immune response directed against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein.
  • After: Protection against COVID-19 is mediated in large part by an immune response directed against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

While we all hope to soon have this pandemic in our collective rearview mirror, it is not likely that we will forget coronavirus disease 2019 or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.–Stacy Christiansen, Chair, AMA Manual of Style

4 thoughts on “Abbreviating the Pandemic

  1. Pingback: Using 'et al.' in your research paper - AsiaEdit

  2. Is it possible to have these decisions annotated within the searchable style manual online so we can see them when we search for “covid”?

  3. Regarding SARS-CoV-2, I have seen authors using “SARS-CoV-2 virus” — I’m assuming this is redundant and “virus” should be deleted. Or is it the case that given SARS-CoV-2 does not need to be expanded any more, “SARS-CoV-2 virus” is not necessarily incorrect (sorry for the double negative). I suppose the same question applied to something like “COVID-19 disease” (though I haven’t come across that from authors so far).

    • SARS-CoV-2 no longer needs to be expanded according to AMA style rules, and the word virus is not needed afterwards.

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