How are pharmaceutical-specific abbreviations and acronyms expanded and controlled in DITA documentation?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Expanding and controlling pharmaceutical-specific abbreviations and acronyms in DITA documentation is essential to enhance clarity, readability, and compliance with industry standards. Several strategies are employed to achieve this:

Glossaries and Definitions

Pharmaceutical organizations maintain glossaries and definitions within DITA. These repositories include entries for abbreviations and acronyms along with their expanded forms. Content creators reference these glossaries while authoring documents, ensuring that abbreviations are expanded on first use and accompanied by their definitions. This practice helps readers understand the meaning of abbreviations and acronyms.

Conditional Text

DITA supports conditional text, allowing authors to display or hide content based on specific conditions. Pharmaceutical documents often use conditional text to expand abbreviations when required. For example, an abbreviation like “FDA” may be expanded to “Food and Drug Administration” in the introduction but retained as “FDA” in subsequent sections. This controlled expansion maintains consistency and readability.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA allows for controlled expansion of abbreviations:


<task id="pharma_process">
  <title>Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Process</title>
  <body>
    <p>Ensure compliance with the <term id="FDA">FDA</term> regulations.</p>
    <p>This process follows <term id="GMP">Good Manufacturing Practices</term> standards.</p>
  </body>

In this example, DITA tags “” are used to define abbreviations like “FDA” and “GMP” with their expanded forms. The document can then control when and how these abbreviations are expanded or displayed.