postnominal initials the initial characters of a degree or other honorary title that often follow the name (and when present the comparative adjective); the p. i. consist in capital letters of the alphabet (or sometimes a truncation, i.e. apocope, to two or three letters) each paired with a symbol marking it as an abbreviation (period) as described in PS-RULE [PS14]; the p. i. are separated from the rest of the name using a comma, when it is introduced in PS-RULE [PS12]