Whenever students are giving citations for a book in their content, they will find that they have to give the name of the publisher as well. There are many publishers whose names are very long. If the writer were to spend his time putting the full name of the publisher then it would take up a lot of space not to mention wasting the student’s time.
So the best solution would be to use short forms for putting the name of the publisher. This is an art because while it is very well to shorten the name of the publishing company, it is also essential that the name should be identifiable to the reader. The reader should know which publishing company the student is talking about.
The most famous publishers can be acknowledged by an acronym or the shortened versions of their complete names. The MLA style guide has some suggestions when it comes to how publisher names can be shortened. It says that the author can omit articles, business abbreviations and descriptive words. Words like House, Corp, Inc, Press and Publishers which are very common in this industry need not be used.
There are publishing companies which are the name of a person. The initials of the person can be omitted and only his last name can be acknowledged. There are publishing house names which are a combination of two last names. It is sufficient if just one name is used. The style guide also recommends that standard abbreviations can be used wherever possible.
There are some publishers whose acronyms are very famous. For instance, everybody in the academic world can instantly recognize the acronym MLA. There is no need for the students to write Modern Language Association. It is simply enough for them to write MLA.