Bible Citation - Abbreviating Book Names

Abbreviating Book Names

The names of the books of the Bible can be abbreviated. Most Bibles give preferred abbreviation guides in their tables of contents, or at the front of the book.

Abbreviations may be used when the citation is a reference that follows a block quotation of text.

Abbreviations should not be used, according to The Christian Writer's Manual of Style, when the citation is in running text. Instead, the full name should be spelled out. Hudson observes, however, that for scholarly or reference works that contain a large number of citations in running text, abbreviations may be used simply to reduce the length of the prose, and that a similar exception can be made for cases where a large number of citations are used in parentheses.

There are two commonly accepted styles for abbreviating the book names, one used in general books and one used in scholarly works.