Of all the titles of the Church's Standard Works, no name suffers such a frequent slight as does the Doctrine and Covenants.

In writing and in speech, the Doctrine and Covenants is often one of the most abbreviated phrases in our acronym-happy Church, with the sacred volume often identified simply as "D&C" or even by some as "D.C."

A recent Web search finds that Doctrine and Covenants competes with some 250 other names, words and phrases abbreviated as "D.C." as well as with another dozen referred with the "D&C" tag.



Other Standard Works are never abbreviated as routinely -- nary an H.B. for Holy Bible (although O.T. and N.T. for Old Testament and New Testament are sometimes used), B.O.M. for Book of Mormon or the cumbersome POGP for the Pearl of Great Price.

And when individuals avoid the abbreviation and say the book's full name when speaking, it often comes out as a run-on, phonetically condensed version missing several syllables -- sounding along the lines of "doct-rand-cov-nants" or even something like "Doctor Covens."

The above somewhat-tongue-in-cheek paragraphs aside, no simple title of any of the Standard Works carries more impact in the words and significance than does the title of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Unlike the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon and much of the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants is not a translation of ancient documents but almost exclusively a compilation of latter-day revelations, mostly given to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

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This story is provided by the LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by the Deseret News.