Abbreviations

When writing, it is often helpful to abbreviate certain terms.  The table below contains a list of some standard abbreviations often used in biology.

If an item does not appear on this list, but you wish to abbreviate it, you can write the full name out and put the abbreviation in parentheses so that the reader can reference what you are indicating by your abbreviation.

Example  However, biological membranes may also adopt highly curved conformations such as in tubules of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), small vesicles, edges of ER sheets or Golgi stacks, and fusion stalks. Wang et al. 2013

Units of Measure

When reporting numeric data, include an abbreviated version of the metric units. Put a space between the number and the unit.

Student example

Average width of the stream was 5.6 m.

Professional example

For example, mean corolla diameter ranged from 4.2 ± 0.9 mm (mean ± SD) in female flowers in the southern Baja California dimorphic population IHC, to over twice that width (9.5 ± 0.7 mm) in the cosexual central Mexico population LL.  (Kamath et al. 2017)

 Common abbreviations and units of measure