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I am aware that there are well-defined referencing methods, such as the MLA format. However, without adhering to MLA format, I wrote the following sentence in an answer on ELU.SE:

Here's a poetic proverb from Solomon's compilation, older than the English language to be sure, but translated idiomatically enough to English in the NIV version of the Bible.

The phrase in question is

the NIV version of the Bible

which, once written, I wanted to revise. I vacilated between leaving it alone and writing

"the NIV Bible"

and after some deliberation, ended up choosing

"the NIV of the Bible"

because expanded, this reads:

"the New International Version of the Bible".

Well, after I was done, a moderator on clean-up duty did a wonderful job tidying up my text and fixing formats. One of the edits included my reference, which is now:

the NIV edi­tion of the Bi­ble

which I had not considered when I was writing, but seems excellent anyhow. However, fully expanded, it reads: "the New International Version Edition of the Bible", which seems repetetive. Version comes from a word meaning "spilling" or "turning over" (https://www.etymonline.com/word/version), very similar in sentiment to edition.

So my question is this: Is there existing custom or a rule in regards to acronym expansion for this style of informal citation? Or is my mod's edit just a correction of style?

I wrongly posted this question on ELU first, but now looking at it again, I do not know if it belongs here. Feel free to opine if it's in the way, but my first impression is that it corresponds to SE's style experts.

Conrado
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    For Bible translations normally just the abbreviation and possibly a year if there are multiple versions is sufficient: "NIV 2011". – curiousdannii May 12 '20 at 05:47
  • This does not belong on Meta, because it's not about the site itself or a request for resources about English. It might actually be about a particular point in English ("NIV version"? "NIV edition"? "NIV Bible"?) in which case it's on-topic on the main site; but arguably it's not about English at all, because the same question could apply to that sentence in any language. In any case, it's a better fit for Main than Meta. It could possibly be an even better fit on Writers, where citation is explicitly on-topic. – Andrew Leach May 13 '20 at 15:30
  • @AndrewLeach Thanks-- I posted here at first, but hachi said it belonged on meta-- Should I just delete it and re-post on Writers? – Conrado May 13 '20 at 15:34
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    We do universally refer to a 'PIN number', which has the same tautology. NIV being a less commonly understood abbreviation, isn't normal practice to use the expanded form on first mention, followed immediately by the initialism/acronym in brackets? Thereafter, 'the NIV' will suffice. – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 15:37
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    Related: What is it called when we follow an acronym with a word already in the acronym? – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 15:41
  • @EdwinAshworth Excellent, that describes the problem that I mean. In the earlier post referenced there, https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14868/pin-number-why-do-we-say-it, it calls my first version the "etymological fallacy". This question seems to be a duplicate, then. I did search, but didn't find the post you inidicate. Thanks! – Conrado May 13 '20 at 15:45
  • The 'etymological fallacy' is usually cited as a reason why we mustn't demand say that the only proper use of anti-Semitic is hatred of all Semitic peoples. But 'PIN number' must now be considered a proper usage, a misnomer that has become acceptable. Whereabouts 'NIV version' is on the acceptability scale, I don't know. I always use 'the NIV', and 'an NIV' for a physical copy of said version. 'TLB' I never use (though I use 'the Living Bible' quite a lot) (and I use the Living Bible quite a lot). – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 16:28

2 Answers2

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Typically things like the NIV, King James, etc, are referred to as translations, since the original works were not in English (Hebrew and Greek were the predominant languages of the Old and New Testaments, respectively) and the multiple variants of the Christian Bible simply differ in how they translate the original material.

Harper Collins (a book publisher that publishes Bibles) puts it like this

How is the NIV translation different from other translations?

Zondervan (also a Bible publisher) says

[T]he New International Version (NIV) is the most widely read Bible translation in contemporary English

You could also get away with just saying "The NIV Bible" in many places.

Machavity
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Gngram shows that the NIV Bible is most common, whereas it finds no instance of the NIV edi­tion of the Bi­ble, although it looks neat and correct.

Initialisms and acronyms are very commonly used as attributive noun phrases and they are placed before the noun they modify. You get:

  • The CNN news (Cable News Network News)
  • a BBC broadcast (British Broadcasting Corporation)
  • the AIDS syndrome (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome)

and the list is very long (between the parenthesis you can see how the acronyms already contain the word they are followed by).

fev
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