I ask this question after reading an article about the disassembly of the sign “Sweeney Mfg. Co.” on a former industrial building in Brooklyn, where it used to be a landmark for many years. “Mfg” is obviously the abbreviation of “manufacturing”, but there’s no g in that word. Why this shorting?
I think mfg stands for manufactured goods, in most cases.
How would you abbreviate manufacturing?
I think you need to look again.
There’s no g in manufacturing? :dubious:
Well, yes, but it has no relation to the root of the word, it’s just the participle suffix. It’s not that important a letter in the word to put it in a three-letter abbreviation.
But it’s important to convey the -ing suffix, so people don’t think it’s short for manufactured, or manufacturer.
Beginning, end and something from near the middle. Seems pretty sensible to me.
And here I always thought it stood for monofodium glutamate!
Hmm that joke would work better in a font where the f looked more like a germanic s…
monoſodium glutamate
That sort of abbreviation was a convention of the day. Sort of like bbl for barrels. Sorta.
Because “mfr” was already taken by the Black Panthers.
Yeah, but MF conveys an entirely differnt concept.
There is an actual algorithm for correctly forming an abbreviation.
Repeat the following steps until the word or phrase is reduced to the desired length:
Overall guidelines:[ul][li]Apply these rules to all words in the phrase.[/li][li]Always start from the back (right) end of the words.[/li][li]Never remove the first letter of a word.[/li][/ul] [ol]
[li]Remove entirely words like a, an, the, and, of, etc. [/li][li]Remove one of any double letters (like the t’s in letter).[/li][li]Remove internal vowels.[/li][li]Remove one of any double letters that might have been created by the above step.[/li][li]Remove consonants.[/li][/ol]
This generally results in the most understandable abbreviation for the word or phrase. But there are many abbreviations in use that don’t follow these rules, but are commonly recognized because of their familiarity.)
cite? or did you just make that up? :dubious:
Why? I never got that one.
Here’s a link for origin of bbl. I think in comments the guy that says bl was for bales is correct. The blue barrel bit is not correct because it was around before Standard Oil, which internally may have meant blue barrel for them. Nobody stops you from abbreviating however you like for a product on your companies invoices. Link for bbl.
I’m sure mfg is like most abbreviations in that some well known company started to use it and the use spread. I still haven’t run across a place to register abbreviations you want to use.
I have an old AT&T book of official abbreviations. Cable is to be abbreviated cbl. That removes 2 out of the 5 letters. Abbreviation is to be abbreviated abrv.
To one up that one 
The swedish army supposedly abbreviates grodman (frogman) grdman (frgman)… make sense? Nope.