(continued from Training Procedures)

Appendix 1: Abbreviation Rules

The rules for generating the abbreviations are as follows:

1. Letters
   • First letter-   Always the first letter of the item name.
   • Second letter (if required for the abbreviation to be unique):
     • One word items: the second letter of the word.
     • Two word items: the 1^st letter of the second word
   • Third letter (if required):
     • One word items: the third letter…
     • Two word items: the 2^nd letter of the second word.
     • Three word items: the 1^st letter of the third word.
   • Fourth letter:  You get the picture.

   Optional exception to above rules:  Two or more word items are assigned by default the 1^st letter of each word.  If not unique follow procedure above.

2. If you run out of letter in the item name to create the abbreviation, use numbers to obtain a unique abbreviation. 
3. Only use letters of the alphabet when creating abbreviations.  If a non-alphabet character is encountered, skip to the next character in the name.

Common Word Skipping

The following words are eliminated from the abbreviation generation process:

A, the, of, and, &, et, al, with

So, for example, Catch of the Day would be abbreviated to CD.  The words to exclude are stored in Xwords.txt.

Abbreviation Optimization: Frequency Factor

A “frequency” factor (0 to 1) is assigned to items so that those being ordered the most are assigned the shortest abbreviation.  The frequency factor can be computed by use of historical item sales data (see below), if available.

(continued in Appendix 2 Abbreviations for Wine Lists)