Acrostic

Have you ever heard of an acrostic? Well, chances are you've seen acrostics many times but did not know the proper term for it. An acrostic is a body of text in which the first, last or other specific letters spell out a word or phrase when put in chronological order.

Acrostic defined

An acrostic is a form of writing in which the first letters of each line form their own word. In most acrostics, the letters are bolded or enlarged, so you can easily see the word when scanning the first column of letters from top to bottom.

Acrostics are sometimes used as a memory-retention aid; they're also used in children's books and greetings cards. One of the more popular items at gift shops are cards that feature acrostics in honor of common names. 

An alternate type of acrostic is the word square, in which a set of words are arranged horizontally and vertically. Another variation is the double acrostic, in which the first and last letters of every line—and sometimes a column running down the middle—will form their own words. 

Acrostics are not to be confused with acronyms, which are abbreviations formed by the first letters in a brand name or phrase.

The use of acrostics

An example of an acrostic greeting card addressed to any girl named Mary could read like this:

Magnificent

Amazing

Ravishing

Youthful

In some acrostic greeting cards, each line will start with an introduction of the letter, such as this acrostic made for boys named Jason:

J is for jovial

A if for artistic

S if for sensational

O is for original

N is for newfangled

When used for the purpose of memory retention, an acrostic might give a set of instructions tied to a certain theme, such as tips on how to learn:

Leave the hard question for last

Erase your mistakes

Add details to your answers

Read your answers to double-check for spelling

Never leave a question blank, even if you don't know the answer

Acrostics are sometimes used in poetry, where the title will form the acrostic word. In poems with multi-word titles, each acrostic word might be separated into stanzas.

Origins of the term

The term "acrostic" stems from a combination of the Greek words akros (at the end) and stichos (verse). The first known application of the form was the Erythraean Sibyl's prophecies, which appeared on leaves with the first letters arranged to form words. Roman playwrights such as Ennius and Plautus used acrostics in the titles of their works; the form was also popular among Alexandrian Greeks, Medieval monks, and certain poets of Middle High Germany and Renaissance Italy. 

During that last period, some authors used acrostics to encode hidden meaning into texts. In Het Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem, the first letter of each stanza forms an acrostic that reads "WILLEM VAN NASSOV," in homage to William the Silent, the Prince of Orange at the time of the anthem's 1570s writing. 

Acrostics have also made notable appearances in famous works of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the final paragraph of Vladimir Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters" (1951), the first letter of each word forms an acrostic message from the deceased. Another famous example of acrostics in literature is contained in Edgar Allan Poe's descriptively titled "An Acrostic."

Acrostics have been recognized as one of the earliest types of word games. As such, the form enjoyed a surge in popularity during the 19th century, which saw a renewed interest in word games of various sorts. Consequently, acrostics have seen a drop in popularity since the 1930s, a period that gave rise to word games of the print world—crossword puzzles, word searches—that demand more in terms of reader involvement.