In general writing, abbreviate government as Govt. In legal citations, use Gov’t. Both are widely accepted; the choice comes down to whether you’re writing prose, a footnote, or a court filing.
The Two Forms and Why They’re Punctuated Differently
“Govt.” is a truncation. The word is cut short after the “t,” and the period signals that letters have been dropped from the end.
“Gov’t” is a contraction. Interior letters between the “v” and the “t” are removed, and the apostrophe marks the gap. Because the apostrophe already tells the reader something is missing, most style guides drop the trailing period. You’ll occasionally see “Gov’t.” written with both marks, but the cleaner form without the final period is more common, particularly in legal writing.
A third short form, “Gov.,” is the title abbreviation for “Governor” rather than a shorthand for the noun “government,” so it doesn’t substitute for either of the two above.
Capitalization
Capitalize the abbreviation only when you’d capitalize the full word. Referring to a specific named entity, such as the U.S. Government as a party in a lawsuit, takes a capital. General references stay lowercase: “local govt. spending,” “federal government.” The Chicago Manual of Style treats “government” as a common noun even in phrases like “federal government” or “U.S. government.”1The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Headlines and Titles of Works The usual exceptions apply: capitalize at the start of a sentence or as part of a formal title.
Plurals
Add a lowercase “s” to form the plural. For the truncated form, the “s” follows the period: “Govts.” For the contracted form, it goes on the end: “Gov’ts.” Don’t insert an apostrophe before the “s.” The apostrophe in “Gov’t” marks missing letters, not possession, and stacking a second one would confuse the punctuation.
Plural abbreviations show up mostly in comparative writing. If you have the space, spell “governments” out.
When to Spell It Out
Both the GPO Style Manual and Chicago push writers toward the full spelling in running prose. Abbreviated forms belong in tables, headings, footnotes, parenthetical references, and other tight-space contexts. Federal publications typically spell “government” out in body text, and Chicago discourages abbreviating common words except where space calls for it. If your sentence has room for the whole word, use it.
Legal Citation Format
Legal writing has its own rules. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, which controls citation format in most American courts and law reviews, specifies “Gov’t” as the abbreviation for “Government” in case names and citations.2Cornell Law Institute. Basic Legal Citation – Section: 4-100. Words Abbreviated in Case Names Table T6 lists standard abbreviations for words that commonly appear in case names and institutional author names.3The Bluebook Online. T6 Case Names and Institutional Authors in Citations “Government” should be abbreviated wherever it appears in a party’s name within a citation.
Two boundaries on that rule. When you’re referring to the case in running text rather than in a parenthetical citation, only certain starred words get abbreviated. And in formal prose that isn’t part of a citation, the word should be spelled out.
Get the form right: legal citations use the contracted “Gov’t” with an apostrophe, not the truncated “Govt.” with a period. Mixing them up won’t usually get a filing rejected on its own, but sloppy citation formatting signals carelessness to judges and opposing counsel. Courts do reject briefs for citation-format deficiencies among other technical errors.
The .gov Domain Is a Different Kind of Abbreviation
If you landed here because of a URL, note that “.gov” isn’t a general shorthand for the word “government.” It’s a top-level domain restricted to verified U.S.-based government organizations, managed through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.4get.gov. Eligibility for .gov domains Federal, state, tribal, county, city, and other public entities can register one, and its presence in a web address functions as a trust signal that the site belongs to an actual government body.5get.gov. Home Use “.gov” only in URLs and domain references, not as a substitute for “Govt.” or “Gov’t” in writing.